"Framley Parsonage" focuses on life in 19th-century England, revolving around Mark Robarts, a parish parson who is under the patronage of a local personage, Lady Lufton, and her handsome son, Lord Ludovico Lufton. The young parson cultivates seemingly innocuous relationships and activities that Lady Lufton disapproves of. His excessively trusting friendliness towards a politician, called Mr. Sowerby, leads him to commit himself to the signing of certain bills which compromise him financially, eventually to a severe extent when the creditors pursue him for the honoring of the bills.
Meanwhile, the sister of Mark Robarts comes to visit her brother and soon meets young Lord Lufton, who quickly falls in love with her, to the chagrin of his mother, Lady Lufton, who has earmarked him for marriage with the beautiful but rather taciturn Griselda Grantley, daughter of a local archdeacon. In the playing out of these conflicts, the human and Christian values of friendship, of faithfulness in marriage, and the various aspects of matchmaking, as well as clemency towards the sick and unfortunate, are quite notable.
Nowhere in the novel is there any untoward sex, violence, vulgar language, or attacks against the Church. All in all, this novel is an absorbing read, of considerable formational value.