Zuriel's Grandchild

Zuriel's Grandchild by R. V. M. Sparling. A sprawling Victorian-era saga of wealth, inheritance, and family secrets centered on the Zuriel family of Stor Court in Lancashire. The tale begins with John Zuriel, a self-made millionaire who retires from trade and transforms Stor Court into a palace of luxury, only to confront social tensions between money and birth. His daughter Selina Zuriel, beautiful yet fragile, becomes the focal point of a struggle between a father's demand for a respectable match and a daughter's heart. She elopes with Captain Arthur Auguste Delorme, incurring her father's wrath and a permanent estrangement that scatters the family across England. The narrative then follows generations: Frances Enstridge, Frederick Enstridge, the marriage market, and a host of suitors who circle Selina’s line. Selina's daughter Dora Delorme later enters the scene, as sorrow and memory alter the family’s course; the story moves from Stor Court to Derbyshire moorland and London parlors, tracing love, loss, forgiveness, and the slow assertion that happiness cannot be bought. The novel remains a social meditation on wealth, status, and the enduring bonds of kin across time.