''Ovington's Bank'' is a novel by the English historical novelist Stanley John Weyman, set during an 1825 banking crisis. It was published in London in 1922 by John Murray. It was revived in paperback 2012 and 2015 after the

2008 financial crisis The 2008 financial crisis, also known as the global financial crisis (GFC), was a major worldwide financial crisis centered in the United States. The causes of the 2008 crisis included excessive speculation on housing values by both homeowners ...

. It was published in hardback in 2018 with a 24-page critical biography of Weyman.

Setting and plot

The novel is set immediately before and during the British

Panic of 1825 The Panic of 1825 was a stock market crash that originated in the Bank of England, arising partly from speculative investments in Latin America, including the fictitious country of Poyais. The crisis was felt most acutely in Britain, where it led ...

, which was caused largely by a fraud involving "Poyais", an invented South American country. As a result, about 70 banks failed. The novel follows the effects of the events on two fictional English communities named Aldersbury and Garth. 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. It stresses that the bank had been run very carefully. As a recent scholar put it, the bank was "solvent, amply solvent", but customers "would rush in at the first alarm, like a flock of silly sheep... each bent on his own safety, blindly on ruin." 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."

Televised

The novel was adapted for

BBC The British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) is a British public service broadcaster headquartered at Broadcasting House in London, England. Originally established in 1922 as the British Broadcasting Company, it evolved into its current sta ...

television in 1965 as ''Heiress of Garth'' in six episodes of 25 minutes. The director was Paddy Russell and the cast included

Bernard Archard Bernard Joseph Archard (20 August 1916 – 1 May 2008) was an English actor who made many film and television appearances. Early life and career Archard was born in Fulham, London, where his father Alfred James Aloysius, who was born in Maryle ...

, William Mervyn, June Ritchie, Mary Webster and David Weston. The story editor was Betty Willingale and the writing was by Anthony Coburn, based on the Stanley J. Weyman novel.IMD
Retrieved 20 August 2017.
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References

External links

{{Portal, Banks
Project Gutenberg text of the novel
English novels English historical novels 1922 British novels Fictional bankers British novels adapted into television shows