The Macdermots of Ballycloran

What It's About

Set in County Leitrim in the 1830s, this novel follows the Macdermots, an impoverished Catholic landowning family struggling to hold on to their crumbling estate of Ballycloran. Larry Macdermot and his son Thady are sinking under a mortgage held by their social-climbing rival, the builder Joe Flannelly, while Thady's sister Feemy finds herself drawn to Captain Myles Ussher, a British excise officer despised locally for his ruthless suppression of illegal poteen distilling. As debt, family pride, and local resentment of Ussher all come to a head, the Macdermots are drawn toward a confrontation that will decide the family's fate.

Key Concepts

The novel is built around the tensions of pre-Famine Ireland: the precarious position of Catholic landowners under a Protestant legal and social order, the corrosive effect of debt and mortgage on family standing, and the resentment stirred by British enforcement of excise law. It also examines the fragility of a young woman's reputation once compromised, and the way a rigged system of justice compounds personal tragedy into social tragedy.

About the Author

Anthony Trollope (1815–1882) was an English novelist who spent several years working for the Post Office in Ireland, an experience that shaped this, his debut novel. He went on to become one of the most prolific and widely read novelists of the Victorian era.