[3] The novel is set immediately before and during the British Panic of 1825, which was caused largely by a fraud involving "Poyais", an invented South American country.
Weyman, still a well-known novelist in the period when he wrote the book, describes the conflict between the old-established rural gentry, whose wealth is drawn as landowners exploiting large estates, and the striving business classes, drawing theirs from banking and industry.
The novel, set a century before publication, has a conventional plot involving an exaltation of honesty and love as a way of overcoming pride and prejudice.
"[5] Another recent commentator has called it a notable attempt "to depict the ways in which urbanization and Reform politics had helped to shape the broad outlines of the Victorian world.
The director was Paddy Russell and the cast included Bernard Archard, William Mervyn, June Ritchie, Mary Webster and David Weston.