The protagonist is a young woman of noble birth who, through an extraordinary set of circumstances, has fallen in love with and become engaged to a tailor.

They accordingly propose a compromise: that the earl marry Lady Anna, thus reuniting the title and the assets held by her father.

However, in her twenty years as an outcast, Lady Anna has come to love Thomas Thwaite's son Daniel, and the two have become secretly engaged.

Lady Anna will not yield to persuasion or to mistreatment; Daniel Thwaite rejects arguments and bribes to end the relationship.

In 1871, Anthony and Rose Trollope sailed from England to Australia to visit their son Fred, who had settled at a sheep station near Grenfell, New South Wales.

[5] Trollope received £1200 for Lady Anna; his other 1874 novels, Phineas Redux and Harry Heathcote of Gangoil, earned him £2500 and £450 respectively.

In 1873, it was also published in book form by Harper of New York, by Hunter Rose of Toronto, by Tauchnitz of Leipzig, and in Russian as Lady Anna.