The Armine family, in particular the young Ferdinand Armine, is in great financial difficulties. Ferdinand's grandfather has burdened the family estate with large debts, which his father did not manage to diminish. Ferdinand himself is not disposed to live with his small income alone, and during his time in Malta with his regiment, he incurs debts of his own. The only thing that can easily pay for his debts and restore the house of Armine now is for Ferdinand to marry well, and the chosen wife for him is his cousin Katherine, the heiress to their grandfather's wealth. Katharine, who has idolized her cousin like their grandfather did, immediately consents to the marriage. But for Ferdina...

Sybil is one of the most prominent political novels of the mid-nineteenth century, taking as its subject the "condition of England" question. That phrase was first used by Thomas Carlyle in an essay of 1839 on Chartism, a working-class protest movement that plays a prominent role in this novel. The two nations are the rich and the poor, and the increasing gulf between them, and their condition also inspired such writers as Charles Dickens and Mrs. Gaskell, among others (one of whom, Friederich Engels, was the disciple of Karl Marx, and in his The Condition of the Working Class in England in 1844 described the appalling effects of the industrial revolution a year before Sybil appeared).