The Kellys and the O’Kellys

What It's About

Set in rural Ireland in the 1840s, the novel follows two related but very different families: the impoverished but aristocratic O'Kellys, represented by the debt-ridden young landlord Francis O'Kelly (Lord Ballindine), and the more modest but comfortable Kellys, headed by the shrewd Mrs. Kelly and her practical son Martin. Their fortunes become entangled with those of a neighbour, Barry Lynch, a manipulative man scheming to seize his sister Anty's share of their late father's estate by any means necessary. Around these threads, Trollope weaves questions of who will marry whom, and who stands to inherit what, against a backdrop of financial pressure and social ambition.

Key Concepts

Debt and the anxiety it produces run through the novel as a constant undercurrent, alongside the closely related theme of inheritance and the lengths people will go to protect or seize it. Trollope also examines the social gulf between Ireland's landed gentry and its more ordinary tenant classes, and how courtship and marriage were bound up with money and status rather than romance alone. The opening scene, set at the real 1844 trial of the Irish nationalist Daniel O'Connell, situates the story within the political tensions of the period, though the novel itself remains a domestic and social comedy rather than a political one.

About the Author

Anthony Trollope (1815–1882) was an English novelist who spent much of his early career as a civil servant with the Post Office in England and Ireland. He began writing while stationed in Ireland in the 1840s, and went on to become one of the most prolific and widely read novelists of the Victorian era, admired for his shrewd, closely observed portraits of social and domestic life.