Deerbrook portrays the failed love affair between Edward Hope, a local physician and Margaret Ibbotson, his sister-in-law. Married to Hester Ibbotson, Edward's life becomes a series of misfortune, first with his stifling marriage and second due to a vile rumour that he had robbed a grave! Excerpt: "Every town-bred person who travels in a rich country region, knows what it is to see a neat white house planted in a pretty situation,in a shrubbery, or commanding a sunny common, or nestling between two hills,and to say to himself, as the carriage sweeps past its gate, "I should like to live there,""I could be very happy in that pretty place." Transient visions pass before his mind's eye of dewy summer mornings, when the shadows are long on the grass, and of bright autumn afternoons, when it would be luxury to saunter in the neighbouring lanes; and of frosty winter days, when the sun shines in over the laurustinus at the window, while the fire burns with a different light from that which it gives in the dull parlours of a city."

Harriet Martineau (18021876) was a British social theorist and Whig writer, often cited as the first female sociologist. Martineau wrote many books and a multitude of essays from a sociological, holistic, religious, domestic and, perhaps most controversially, feminine perspective. She also translated various works by Auguste Comte, and she earned enough to support herself entirely by her writing, a rare feat for a woman in the Victorian era.