George Fielding is an honest young man whit no luck or fortune, who dreams of winning the hand of young Susan Merton. Her father, however, doesn't want his daughter to marry a poor farmer, so George leaves to Australia to try his luck there, keeping the contact with Susan through letters. However, a ruthless squire John Meadows becomes obsessed with Susan and sabotages George intercepting letters between lovers and conspiring to have George framed and sent to jail.

Charles Reade (1814-1884) was an English novelist and dramatist, best known for The Cloister and the Hearth. Reade began his literary career as a dramatist, making his reputation by the two-act comedy, Masks and Faces. He made his name as a novelist and became famous because of his novel The Cloister and the Hearth which was based on a few lines by the medieval humanist Erasmus about the life of his parents.