# Short Fiction — Character guide

> Key figures in Short Fiction by Anthony Trollope.

- [Frau Frohmann](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/short_fiction_4_se/characters/frau_frohmann.md): Frau Frohmann presides over her inn and her people with a will that brooks no contradiction, proud of the old ways and suspicious of newfangled notions. Her stubbornness is both her strength and her trap: she cannot easi
- [Alice Dugdale](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/short_fiction_4_se/characters/alice_dugdale.md): Alice is the capable, unglamorous centre of her household, giving out soap and sugar and minding other people's children while quietly loving Major Rossiter. The tension is cruel and simple: he loves her but is ashamed o
- [Fred Pickering](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/short_fiction_4_se/characters/fred_pickering.md): Fred Pickering arrives in distress but carries himself without supplication, his keen intellect and dry humour intact despite a wife and children depending on him. He throws himself into scholarly work with real discipli
- [Bessy Pryor](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/short_fiction_4_se/characters/bessy_pryor.md): Bessy holds her place among the county girls only by Mrs. Miles's favour, and she knows it. When she falls in love with the heir of Launay, she is ordered to surrender him and instead answers with quiet, absolute refusal
- [Mrs. Miles](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/short_fiction_4_se/characters/mrs_miles.md): Mrs. Miles rules Launay and everyone in it, and the neighbourhood knows better than to cross her. She has raised Bessy as her own child and genuinely loves her, yet cannot tolerate a marriage that fails to combine the pr
- [Mr. Greenmantle](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/short_fiction_4_se/characters/mr_greenmantle.md): Mr. Greenmantle watches his daughters navigate lodgings, late hours, and the arrival of Abraham Hall, a solid, smutty, well-spoken engineer who seems a pillar of strength. The trouble is that both girls take an interest,
- [Jack Hollycombe](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/short_fiction_4_se/characters/jack_hollycombe.md): Jack Hollycombe is a young man caught between the modest prospects of Plumplington and his own impatient ambition, repeatedly asking what good any man can do in such a place. His courtship of Polly Peppercorn gives the r
- [Mally Trenglos](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/short_fiction_4_se/characters/mally_trenglos.md): Mally Trenglos stands apart in her Cornish community, a young woman whose loyalties and desires run against the grain of respectable expectation. Her determination to choose for herself creates the central tension of the
- [Lucy Graham](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/short_fiction_4_se/characters/lucy_graham.md): Lucy Graham works at the telegraph office and carries the double burden of her own poverty and her sister Sophy's failing health, giving up her room, her dinners, and her mended boots to send money home. Her quiet self-d
- [Emily Greenmantle](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/short_fiction_4_se/characters/emily_greenmantle.md): Emily Greenmantle belongs to the household at the center of the Plumplington romance, where a father's plans for his daughters collide with the girls' own inclinations. Her position exposes the tension between filial obe
- [Aaron Dunn](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/short_fiction_4_se/characters/aaron_dunn.md): Aaron Dunn lives and works among a household of women on a remote island, taking his meals with them and retiring each evening to his plans and drawings with demure correctness. The careful propriety of these arrangement
- [Polly Peppercorn](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/short_fiction_4_se/characters/polly_peppercorn.md): Polly Peppercorn is the object of Jack Hollycombe's suit in the Plumplington romance, and she gives as good as she gets, demanding to know where his heart truly lies. Her jealousy over Anastasia Fitzapplejohn and her ref
- [Miss Susan](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/short_fiction_4_se/characters/miss_susan.md): Susan is the younger daughter of the widowed Mrs. Bell, who has raised her girls in a modest cottage at Saratoga Springs, taking in a few steady boarders each summer to make ends meet. Unlike the wealthy girls who flood 
- [Mr. Brown](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/short_fiction_4_se/characters/mr_brown.md): Mr. Brown has spent nearly eight years of marriage avoiding Christmas in England, preferring the mild air of Pau to the clamorous festivities of his wife's Thompson relations. When a summons from the family's newly elect
- [The Major](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/short_fiction_4_se/characters/the_major.md): The Major moves through the social circles of the Alice Dugdale story with the ease of a man accustomed to command, yet his arrival stirs complications that no rank can settle. He is connected to the web of family expect
- [Maurice Archer](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/short_fiction_4_se/characters/maurice_archer.md): Maurice Archer has taken up residence with the Lownd family as a visitor to the parson, and Mrs. Lownd already imagines a comfortable marriage between him and her daughter Isabel. But Maurice is a man of vacillating conv
- [Isa Heine](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/short_fiction_4_se/characters/isa_heine.md): Isa was only seventeen when her cousin Herbert came to board with the Heines, and she treated him at first as one more member of the household—mending his linen, visiting his room, noting his preferences at table without
- [Julius Mackenzie](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/short_fiction_4_se/characters/julius_mackenzie.md): Mackenzie writes to a man he has never met, confessing his impecuniosity, his infidel opinions, and his association with the Spotted Dog in Liquorpond Street, yet his letter carries such keen intelligence that his corres
- [Marie Clavert](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/short_fiction_4_se/characters/marie_clavert.md): Marie lives under Madame Bauche's green-spectacled charity, valued as a useful drudge and never once considered as a woman. The valley has already seen what Madame Bauche has not: that Adolphe Bauche, heir to everything,
- [Maurice Cumming](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/short_fiction_4_se/characters/maurice_cumming.md): Maurice Archer has said nothing to Isabel that could not be proclaimed from the church tower, yet he thinks of her constantly and wavers between certainty and self-mockery. Mrs. Lownd watches him nervously, sure he is ho
- [Isabel Lownd](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/short_fiction_4_se/characters/isabel_lownd.md): Isabel moves through the Christmas festivities with a composure that costs her dearly, retreating to her room when the day's excitement nearly overcomes her. When Maurice calls her into the study, she goes silently, and 
- [Nora Field](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/short_fiction_4_se/characters/nora_field.md): Nora is to become Mrs. Frederic F. Frew in January, and has already half-turned American in spirit, defending the Union against her future husband's jibes. With only a hundred pounds from a grandaunt for her trousseau, s
- [Mrs. Thompson](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/short_fiction_4_se/characters/mrs_thompson.md): Mrs. Thompson, comfortably provided for but friendless in England, has settled at the Hôtel des Ambassadeurs where her customs and economies suit her better than Torquay or Leamington. Day by day she stays, ostensibly to
- [Captain Broughton](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/short_fiction_4_se/characters/captain_broughton.md): Captain John Broughton arrives at his Aunt Penelope's Devonshire property as the polished son of Eaton Square, his family quietly hoping the inheritance will follow. Patience Woolsworthy predicts he will find Dartmoor du
- [Bessy Garrow](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/short_fiction_4_se/characters/bessy_garrow.md): Elizabeth Garrow is the quiet, fair-haired center of a Cornish love story, admired for her industry, self-denial, and religious purpose. Her flaw is a reverence for martyrdom: she guards herself so fiercely against lovin
- [Tom Reckenthorpe](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/short_fiction_4_se/characters/tom_reckenthorpe.md): General Reckenthorpe belongs to the world of family councils, marriage prospects, and the careful weighing of sons-in-law. He is a man of rank and opinion, implicated in the romantic and social maneuvering of those aroun
- [Mrs. Brumby](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/short_fiction_4_se/characters/mrs_brumby.md): Mrs. Brumby moves through the world of magazines and literary offices, a woman of peculiar and well-developed talents who negotiates her position with shrewd self-regard. She rejects two offered letters of praise and dic
- [Lotta Schmidt](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/short_fiction_4_se/characters/lotta_schmidt.md): Lotta Schmidt lives in a Vienna of music, courtship, and social calculation, where a man's rise may depend on the wife he chooses. She is caught between the claims of genuine affection and the worldly counsel of those wh
- [Churchill Smith](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/short_fiction_4_se/characters/churchill_smith.md): A man whose name and identity cause confusion and humor.
- [Marian Leslie](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/short_fiction_4_se/characters/marian_leslie.md): Marian Leslie belongs to the world of summer resorts and drawing-room courtships, where mothers fear flirtation and daughters must guard their reputations. She is admired and pursued, yet the very attention that defines 
- [Herbert Onslow](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/short_fiction_4_se/characters/herbert_onslow.md): A young man involved in a romantic subplot.
- [Miss Ophelia Gledd](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/short_fiction_4_se/characters/miss_ophelia_gledd.md): Ophelia Gledd is an only child who once opened her campaign as a rich merchant's daughter and now moves through Boston society with the same exigeant manner though her father's fortune has failed. She goes alone to balls
- [Anastasia Bergen](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/short_fiction_4_se/characters/anastasia_bergen.md): Anastasia Bergen keeps her father's household on Crump Island, managing the servants and the small daily economies of a life conducted mostly by water. She came late to beauty and to love: the young men of St. George onc
- [M. Lacordaire](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/short_fiction_4_se/characters/m_lacordaire.md): A Frenchman involved in a story of love and intrigue.
- [John Rossiter](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/short_fiction_4_se/characters/john_rossiter.md): John Rossiter moves between his mother's worldly ambitions and his own stubborn belief that a man should rise by merit, not by a well-placed marriage. His mother presses Georgiana Wanless on him; his heart keeps returnin
- [Adolphe Bauche](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/short_fiction_4_se/characters/adolphe_bauche.md): Adolphe Bauche is heir to his mother's riches and reputation, the young man every valley household measures its daughters against. Madame Bauche, seeing only a useful drudge in Marie Clavert, never imagined her son could
- [Sophy Wilson](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/short_fiction_4_se/characters/sophy_wilson.md): Sophy Wilson is the absent center of a quarrel about money and love: Mr. Hall's sovereign, sent through Lucy Graham, becomes a question of what a woman may accept from a man who has not quite declared himself. Where Lucy
- [Sir Walter Wanless](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/short_fiction_4_se/characters/sir_walter_wanless.md): Sir Walter Wanless stands at the edge of the story as the prize of connection: great influence, a county contested five times, and a daughter, Georgiana, whose manners and complexion are beyond reproach. His family has l
- [Miss Dawkins](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/short_fiction_4_se/characters/miss_dawkins.md): A woman whose financial independence is a plot point.
- [Miss Sarah Jack](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/short_fiction_4_se/characters/miss_sarah_jack.md): Miss Sarah Jack lives in a ghostlike house at Spanish Town, rich, ungainly, and never silent about the perfidy of England or the apathy of Jamaica's best men. She needles Maurice Cumming for hiding at his estate instead 
- [Herr Crippel](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/short_fiction_4_se/characters/herr_crippel.md): A German character in the Frau Frohmann story.
- [Patrick Regan](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/short_fiction_4_se/characters/patrick_regan.md): Regan arrives with a letter and a story, and though he has a wife and family dependent on him, he offers to surrender a third of his income just to change the nature of his work. What strikes the men who interview him is
- [Caleb Morton](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/short_fiction_4_se/characters/caleb_morton.md): Caleb moves through a world where marriage is treated as a family duty rather than a personal choice, and where a young woman's refusal of a suitable suitor sets off a chain of anxious calculation among those who control
- [Aaron Trow](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/short_fiction_4_se/characters/aaron_trow.md): Trow is a man whose freedom has been stripped away and who now moves through the world with the dangerous unpredictability of someone who has nothing left to lose. His presence forces those around him — particularly wome
- [Philip Hughes](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/short_fiction_4_se/characters/philip_hughes.md): Philip appears suddenly at Avranches and in a single glance reassures Bessy that she has not been abandoned, his presence carrying news he cannot yet speak aloud. He moves with the easy confidence of someone who is loved
- [Mary Crofts](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/short_fiction_4_se/characters/mary_crofts.md): Mary — called Molly by those close to her — grows up in a Saratoga Springs cottage where her widowed mother takes in boarders and frets constantly about the appearance of husband-hunting. The household is loving but anxi
- [Walter Watt](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/short_fiction_4_se/characters/walter_watt.md): A young man involved in a romantic subplot.
- [Barty Gunliffe](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/short_fiction_4_se/characters/barty_gunliffe.md): Barty Gunliffe belongs to a world where love and land are tangled together, and where a farmer's choices about both carry consequences for everyone around him. He is a man of the soil, practical and rooted, but the story
- [Madame Bauche](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/short_fiction_4_se/characters/madame_bauche.md): Madame Bauche is the wealthy matriarch of the valley, benevolent patron to the orphan Marie Clavert, and mistress of all she surveys. Her blind spot is her own charity: she has looked at Marie so long as a dependent that
- [Frederic Frew](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/short_fiction_4_se/characters/frederic_frew.md): Frederic F. Frew is a well-travelled, well-read Pennsylvanian living on a modest inheritance, engaged to Nora Field after months in Liverpool on family business. He is kindly and generous but hard and narrow in his aspir
- [Mr. Barnaby Jones](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/short_fiction_4_se/characters/mr_barnaby_jones.md): A man involved in a story of mistaken identity and humor.
- [John Smith](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/short_fiction_4_se/characters/john_smith.md): A common name used for a character in a humorous tale.
- [Jack O'Conor](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/short_fiction_4_se/characters/jack_o_conor.md): Jack O'Conor is the eldest of the O'Conor brood, a foxhunter who rides close to the hounds and presses invitations with the same cheerful insistence as his father. His warmth and his family's open-handedness pull the nar
- [Philip Launay](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/short_fiction_4_se/characters/philip_launay.md): Philip Launay is the young master of Launay, brought down from London with a physician when his mother falls gravely ill, and thrown into constant company with his cousin Bessy. He is fondly serious, certain that his mot
- [Mr. Grimes](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/short_fiction_4_se/characters/mr_grimes.md): A couple involved in a story of social climbing.
- [Miss Viner](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/short_fiction_4_se/characters/miss_viner.md): A young woman whose romantic fate is explored.
- [Nina Pepé](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/short_fiction_4_se/characters/nina_pepe.md): Nina Pepé moves through a world of Italian households and family expectations, her heart caught between the claims of tradition and the urgings of her own feeling. She is spirited and affectionate, and the tension betwee
- [Dr. Freeborn](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/short_fiction_4_se/characters/dr_freeborn.md): Dr. Freeborn is the trusted doctor of Plumplington, a man whose long practice has made him intimate with every family's secrets and whose counsel carries weight in the parish. He is patient, shrewd, and quietly benevolen
- [Greene](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/short_fiction_4_se/characters/greene.md): A character involved in a story of family and romance.
- [Mrs. St. Quinten](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/short_fiction_4_se/characters/mrs_st_quinten.md): A woman whose unfortunate story is told.
- [Fritz Planken](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/short_fiction_4_se/characters/fritz_planken.md): A German character in the Frau Frohmann story.
- [Hannibal Hoskins](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/short_fiction_4_se/characters/hannibal_hoskins.md): A young man involved in a humorous romantic subplot.
- [Mrs. Greene](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/short_fiction_4_se/characters/mrs_greene.md): A mother figure in a rural romance.
- [Jefferson Ingram](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/short_fiction_4_se/characters/jefferson_ingram.md): An American traveler whose courtship unsettles the social calculations of everyone around him, forcing a quiet telegraph girl to weigh propriety against possibility.
- [Mr. Damer](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/short_fiction_4_se/characters/mr_damer.md): A father involved in his daughter's romantic story.
- [Frank Reckenthorpe](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/short_fiction_4_se/characters/frank_reckenthorpe.md): A young man caught between the pressures of war and the quieter siege of courtship, learning how much of love is strategy conducted by other hands.
- [Miss Wanless](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/short_fiction_4_se/characters/miss_wanless.md): The acknowledged beauty of Brook Park, whose perfect equestrian grace and retiring modesty are themselves instruments in her mother's careful matrimonial campaign.
- [Patience Woolsworthy](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/short_fiction_4_se/characters/patience_woolsworthy.md): A parson's hot-tempered daughter on the edge of Dartmoor, too vivid for her small world and too proud to leave it, whose love story turns on the cost of dominion.
- [Mr. Forrest](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/short_fiction_4_se/characters/mr_forrest.md): An unmarried man whose romantic prospects are explored.
- [Mabel](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/short_fiction_4_se/characters/mabel.md): A young woman in a romantic subplot.
- [Mary Gresley](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/short_fiction_4_se/characters/mary_gresley.md): A serious, self-denying young woman who has resolved to be more than vapid and lover-seeking, only to find her own high principles turned against her heart.
- [Malchen](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/short_fiction_4_se/characters/malchen.md): A young woman in the Frau Frohmann story.
- [Fanny Damer](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/short_fiction_4_se/characters/fanny_damer.md): A young woman whose romantic story is told.
- [Charles Burnaby Jones](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/short_fiction_4_se/characters/charles_burnaby_jones.md): A man involved in a humorous story of mistaken identity.
- [Fritz Schlessen](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/short_fiction_4_se/characters/fritz_schlessen.md): A German character in the Frau Frohmann story.

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