The Small House at Allington

The Small House at Allington is a novel by the English writer Anthony Trollope. It appeared serially in the Cornhill Magazine from 1862 to 1863 and was published as a book in 1864, as the fifth of the Chronicles of Barsetshire.

Squire Dale is an embittered old bachelor who has entrenched himself in the Great House at Allington, while his sister-in-law and her two daughters, Lily and Bell, live in the Small House beside it. Much of the novel turns on the relation between the two households and on the position of the daughters, whose prospects depend on a relative who does not intend to be generous. Lily Dale becomes the most discussed of Trollope's heroines: she is courted by Adolphus Crosbie, a man with ambitions above his means, and by Johnny Eames, who has adored her since childhood. The book also introduces the world of the civil service through the bullying Sir Raffle Buffle and the London offices where Johnny works.

Trollope's readers at the Cornhill were so attached to Lily that they wrote to him asking that she be married to Johnny Eames, which is a fair indication of how the novel was received.