The major plot is a carefully constructed story of crime and punishment; the reader is led to follow the uncertainty and the sympathy with which the community views a woman accused of a crime that only a few decades earlier could have sent her to the gallows. In presenting this story Trollope has shown his skill in presenting female characters--primarily Lady Mason, but also Sophia Furnival. Our humanity is shown sometimes with sympathy, sometimes with irony, sometimes with condemnation--but always as it is. Too bad we never got to see Barbara Stanwyck play the title role. Who would have played Sophia Furnival? LEAR REVISITED THE STRUGGLES OF BROWN, JONES, AND ROBINSON By One of the Firm Graduate students in business administration routinely bury themselves in case studies, which have become a standard hurdle on the way to attaining an MBA. In doing so, they learn to insist on reliable data. However, should the students in the Stanford Graduate School of Business find themselves analyzing the failure of the London mercantile firm of Brown, Jones, and Robinson, they would surely hope to have more objective information than that found in the account of George Robinson, one of the three partners, as given in _The Struggles of Brown, Jones, and Robinson, by One of the Firm_. The reader begins to suspect early on that the firm failed at least in part because of expensive and misleading advertising promoted by Robinson, who himself never concedes as much. The dealings of the firm were hardly transparent, even among the three partners; and the senior partner, Mr. Brown, kept the books to himself. Meanwhile the other partner, Mr. Jones, was taking funds from the till without letting Mr. Robinson know. Among the curious features of genius is its uneven nature. After searching unsuccessfully for his métier with a few novels about Ireland, a historical novel of the French Revolution, and a play, Trollope found his way with _The Warden_ and _Barchester Towers,_ which may be his best known and most loved works. Still experimenting, however, he used his personal experience in the civil service to write _The Three Clerks_, a critical success at the time but not well known today. And then he continued his portrayal of the world of mundane office work by venturing into a picture of the entrepreneurial spirit as shown by _Brown, Jones, and Robinson_. He broke off from it after two weeks and came back to it four years later, but the result was an attempt to satirize the business world. It failed, however, to match his success with the Church, the landed gentry, and the political world of the ruling class.