Julian Fellowes' Doctor Thorne tie-in to OUP

Oxford University Press is publishing the official series tie-in of Julian Fellowes’ ITV adaptation of Doctor Thorne.

Fellowes, best known as the creator of "Downton Abbey", first announced in April 2015 that he was adapting Anthony Trollope’s Victorian era novel Doctor Thorne as a three-part drama for ITV. Starring Tom Hollander, Ian McShane, Rebecca Front and Cressida Bonas, it follows Trollope's original story of "the battle between family honour and desires of the heart".

The tie-in book will be published as part of the extensive Oxford World’s Classic series on 3rd March 2016, in advance of the series airing that month. It will be released in paperback, priced £9.99.

Fellowes, an ardent fan of Trollope, will write the foreword; the introduction will be penned by Simon Dentith, a professor at the University of Reading.

Fellowes said: "He is my favourite Victorian novelist. I think what I admire about him is that he has a very non-judgmental quality. Dickens’ heroines are always virginal and perfect, and his villains are always black-hearted. Of course, Dickens is a wonderful writer, but Trollope has a much more modern approach. Nobody is all bad or all good, and that seems to me to be very contemporary."

Fellowes recently teamed with Orion on serialised novella and app Belgravia to "marry the traditions of the Victorian novel to modern technology". It launches in April.