Alexander Quisanté becomes a power in the house of commons and a ruler in the realm of finance known in London as "the city," all by the grace of a ready tongue, an adjustable conscience, and the stupidity of his fellow men. Lady May marries him knowing that he is uncouth and unrefined, but Quisanté's personality dominates both her and those around him. Alexander Quisanté is an outsider in nineteenth century British society, aspiring to be a gentleman without the manners of a gentleman. MP for Henstead, he can sometimes exhibit a mesmeric genius and at others repellent crassness. The charming May Gaston is the darling of society, and she falls for the genius, convincing himself that the crassness could be moulded out of his nature. The novel is essentially the story of their marriage, the defaults she suffers as he becomes more and more influential politically. He does not even realize what is happening; the good and bad sides of his personality being so much two sides of the same coin than he has little understanding of the way in which he affects others at his worst.

Sir Anthony Hope Hawkins, better known as Anthony Hope was an English novelist and playwright. Although he was a prolific writer, especially of adventure novels, he is remembered best for only two books: The Prisoner of Zenda (1894) and its sequel Rupert of Hentzau (1898). These works, "minor classics" of English literature, are set in the contemporaneous fictional country of Ruritania and spawned the genre known as Ruritanian romance. Zenda has inspired many adaptations, most notably the 1937 Hollywood movie of the same name.