The English critic A. O. J. Cockshut wrote of Trollope's Ralph the Heir, " ... any reader who has previously subscribed to the stock idea of Trollope as a photographer and no artist, would be wise, if he wishes to be just, to consider these chapters carefully."
In Ralph the Heir, Anthony Trollope (1815-1882) again constructs a multilayered Victorian society of the kind he so precisely imagined in the Palliser novels, the Barsetshire chronicles, and The Claverings. Trollope's favorite settings and themes thrive under his characteristically broad but subtly complex treatment. This forgotten but fine novel from his later years moves from country estates to London clubs, from Parliamentary elections to foxes, hounds, and fine horses. Property, illegitimacy and inheritance create the passions through which Trollope exercises his chief concern: character study.
Ralph the Heir is a tale of decent people at the mercy of their own weaknesses. Trollope was never more ironic, rarely more perceptive, than in his portraits of Ralph Newton of London, idle wastrel and heir to a fortune; his namesake cousin, Ralph Newton of Hampshire, stained by illegitimacy; Clarissa Underwood, who trusted Ralph the heir, and the exotic orphan Mary Bonner, who preferred Ralph the bastard. Squire Newton of Newton Priory would atone for the great sin of his youth; Sir Thomas Underwood laments the vanity of his fading years. Under the misanthropic eye of Sir Thomas, each soul declares itself -- and each finally reaps his portion of virtue and of vice.