Anthony Trollope Books

Anthony Trollope (1815-1882) was an English chap working as a postal inspector in Ireland when he wrote this novel in 1855. It was the first of the Barsetshire novels dealing with life amid the rural clergy in a mythical town in the west of England. The novels are: "The Warden"; "Barsetshire Towers"; "Dr Thorne" "The Small House at Alliington" and the longest and best of the series: "The Last Chronicle of Barset." Completing this series the affable and industrious Trollope went on to the Palliser politcal series and countless other works. In all he wrote 47 novels and short stories. While not on the creative level of a Dickens or the Brontes he is, nevertheless, a great novelist who deserves to be more widely read and studied in our English courses in university.
The Warden tells the story of old Septimus Harding who is the warden of a small almshouse for retired workers. There are 12 of the old men who live here. Harding receives a salary of 800 pounds; serves as precenter in the Barsetshire Cathedral and enjoys his violincello, reading, gardening and sharing life with his unmarried daughter Eleanor. His oldest daughter Susan is wed to the proud conservative Dr. Grantley who is the son of the senior citizen Bishop. All is well is this Eden world until a young Doctor John Bold causes a ruckus!
Bold proclaims in the newspapers that Harding is being paid too much and his job is a sincecure while the old men of the almshouse deserve a higher yearly stipend. The novel was written during a time of church reform in the Church of England. The book was inspired by disputes about church governance throughout the land.
Bold is also in love with Eleanor Harding. All ends fairly well as Mr. Harding resigns. He is a man of high Christian values and his conscience is the monitor of his action. He resigns even though Bold had withdrawn his attack in an effort to win Eleanor as his bride. The two marry. Harding is given a smaller residence but retains the esteem of the church powers. The series is well launched.
The Warden is the first of the series and will best be enjoyed if it is read prior to Barchester Towers and the other fine books in the series. Trollpe was better than Jan Karon and is well worth spending time with. His books can be slow but he knew human nature and the Victorian society of which he knew so much about.

Although its principal character, Mr Harding, the Warden of Barchester, suffers abject misery and extreme anxiety during most of this novel, the reader of "The Warden" will enjoy one of the happiest, richest and warmest experiences to be gained from the whole of English Literature.

Untypically short, yet three years in the making, "The Warden" has a simple structure that Trollope utlized again and again. Take a moral dilemma of some sort, one that provides endless pros and cons to be argued, one that possibly takes many hundreds of pages to resolve, explore its social, political and financial implications, and show how it touches the lives of characters not too unlike ourselves.

The dilemma here concerns the income of Septimus Harding, the Warden of Barchester. Under the terms of a will, dated 1434, twelve superannuated woolcarders were to be accommodated in an almshouse, receiving one shilling and fourpence per day. A residence was to be provided for a warden who was to receive the income from the remainder of the testator's property. Now, more than 400 years later, there seems to be an imbalance in these depositions. The almshouse inmates continue to receive only one shilling and fourpence, while the warden, living on the proceeds of some valuable properties, receives eight hundred pounds annually and the use of the warden's house.

The dilemma faces a young Barchester surgeon, John Bold. If he allows the imbalance to continue, the wishes of the original benefactor, he believes, are being nullified. If he succeeds in having the warden's comfortable living discontinued, he will lose forever the possibility of making the warden's daughter his wife. And so the issue is taken up, argued and publicized.

As Anthony Trollope reveals in his autobiography, this tiny novel was successful enough (it earned him twenty pounds) to lead him to consider writing more of the same, and he soon began "Barchester Towers".

English actor Sir Nigel Hawthorne, brilliant as Archdeacon Grantly in a memorable TV adaptation of this novel, revisits Trollope's Barchester to provide a robust, opulent, complete and unabridged reading that no Trollope enthusiast should miss hearing.

This is the first in Trollope's Barchester series, and it is a must read. It's a nineteenth century Bonfire of the Vanities, in which almost any course of action other than that which the leading characters select would lead to an amicable solution. Chapter by chapter, Reverend Harding's guilt over his lucrative clerical sinecure builds, like a tightly wound spring. And ironically, Rev. Harding and Mr. Bold, his adversary, and future son-in-law, are not actually opposed on the merits of the case, yet events sweep them toward confrontation. The misunderstandings and missed opportunities are of epic proportions, and the tension builds throughout the story to its bitter and hopeless conclusion. In the end, hardly anyone escapes unscathed, and the reader is thoroughly exhausted.

Anthony Trollope's novel _The Warden_, though one-hundred and fifty years old this year, is just as readable and just a politically relevent today as it was in Victorian England. Mr. Trolllope offers a wonderful perspective on the fallout that occurs in highly polarized political settings - in this case Victorian England.

Septimus Harding is a middle-aged Anglican cleric who earns 800 pounds a year looking after and caring for the residents of an almshouse. His patients are elderly and disabled peasants; the almshouse the result of the will of one John Hiram, four-hundred years dead, who declared that his land in Barsetshire, the couny where the novel is set, should be rented out and the revenue used to fund a hospital for ailing tradesmen, and that each tradesman should receive a small allowance. Four hundred years later, the value, and the rents on the land have increased four fold, and along with the increase in revenue, the salaries of the warden, who looks after the patients, and the steward, who cares for the buildings, have increased, but the allowances for the patients have not.

Mr. Harding has a young friend, Mr. Bold, a man so bent on reform that he would reform his own household, given the chance, even if nothing were wrong with it. Mr. Bold gets his hands on old Hiram's will,a dn here the action begins. Mr. Bold and his attorney come to the conclusion that the Barchester cathedral, the executer of Hiram's will, has not been following the will properly, by not increasing the allowances of the patients of the hospital, and over-inflating the salaries of the warden and the steward. He brings a law-suit against the warden and the steward.

But there are other problems brewing in Barchester. Dr. Grantly, the archdeacon of the church and Mr. HArdings son in law, is a staunch defender of the rights of sthe Church of England to conduct business as it sees fit, and therefore stands in direct opposition to the reforms of Mr. Bold. Mr. Bold is in love with Mr.Harding's unmarried daughter, Eleanor, and this brings him trouble when he files a lawsuit against her father. And Mr. Harding is beginning to doubt whether or not he deserves his salary, which is worrying to both Mr. Bold, because with out Mr. Harding he has no case against the church, and Dr. Grantly, who sees Mr. Harding's questioning of the validiity of his salary as threatening to the church.

Spetimus Harding is a truly honest, valiant man in the middle of a war of ideology. Add that to Trollope's scathing reviews of the press (and a writer he calls Mr. Popular Sentiment, a satirization of Charles Dickens) and you have a tale that is just as relevent in America in 2005 as it was in England in 1855.

Anthony Trollope's The Warden (1855) raises interesting ethical questions concerning questions of right and wrong, and ideas of fairness. The novel is grounded in conflicting interpretations of how funds earmarked for the poor from a wealthy man's four hundred year old will should be spent. The novel focuses on Reverend Septimus Harding, the good natured Warden of Hiram Hospital, who is at the center of the controversy.

The plot of Trollope's novel chronicles Mr. Harding's internal struggles with public accusations of malfeasance. As Warden of Hiram's Hospital, Mr. Harding has been charged with overseeing the welfare and spiritual well-being of twelve aged bedesmen-poor elderly men supported by John Hiram's trust. In performing his duties towards the bedesmen, Mr. Harding's efforts are universally regarded as beyond reproach; nevertheless, questions arise as to whether the amount of money Mr. Harding receives as Warden, eight hundred pounds annually, contradicts the original intention of John Hiram's 1434 will to help the poor.

John Hiram, a wealthy magnate of the Barchester wool industry, had stipulated in his 1434 will that an almshouse be created to take care of twelve aged men who had worked as cardsmen in the wool trade. The will directed that funding for the almshouse come from rent from Hiram's lands to be overseen by the Anglican Church. From 1434 to the mid-nineteenth-century-the present of the novel-the amount of money raised for the rent of these lands has increased considerably. When the novel begins, most of this extra money has been given to the Warden himself.

Trollope's The Warden raises this basic question: how should the extra proceeds from the rent be distributed? Throughout the novel various interests-the popular press, the church, and legal authorities-weigh in on this question, each with its own unique point of view and stake in the matter.

This novel offers no easy answers and instead dwells on the ambiguity of moral issues. In chapter 15, the narrator (and by extension Trollope) hints at this perspective: "in this world no good is unalloyed, and that there is little evil that has not in it some seed of what is goodly."

The Warden is definitely worthwhile read. It is not as funny as Barchester Towers, which made me laugh out loud, but it is as sophisticated and subtle. This would be an interesting novel to complement a college course on ethical issues.

The Warden is a slender volume in comparison with many of Trollope's other novels, but is chock-full of all the elements that make him one of my favorite authors of any time or place. The central characters are deeply nuanced, the details of time and place make the experience solid for the reader, the broader comic characters are actually funny, and the central question can be debated on many levels.

In telling the deceptively simple tale of two men of good conscience on opposite sides of a serious debate, I found the saddest, most profound, and most humorous aspect was the one at the heart of the book: that these two men, left to their own devices could and would have come to an agreement fairly easily. Unfortunately, each finds far more passionately partisan supporters who fan the flames of controversy and keep them apart, causing far more trouble than was ever required.

As a comedy of manners that opens our eyes to another time and place, as a philosophical question, or simply as a delightful story, The Warden is a book well worth reading and re-reading and keeping close to your heart.

If this first glimpse of Barsetshire is as special to you as it was to me, you'll be thrilled to know there are another five volumes in the series, each of which is much, much longer than the first. On the other hand, if it doesn't appeal enough to carry on, The Warden can easily be read as a stand-alone novel.

If you decide to read just one Trollope novel, this is the one I would recommend. If you're then inclined to read more, you're in for a great many literary treats, but this one will definitely stay with you.

In this delightful short novel, Trollope highlights and satirizes clerical abuses in the 19th century Church of England. The story centers around a legacy that was intended for charitable purposes but which is now being used to provide a comfortable sinecure for a minor clergyman. However, rather than taking the easy route of painting the recipient, Mr. Harding, as a conniving exploiter, Trollope instead portrays him as an innocent and gentle figure who lovingly cares for the bedesmen of the charity and who innocently accepts his excessive income as a customary gift. As the story unfolds, another harsher figure, Archdeacon Grantly, aggressively defends the church's rights, but Mr. Harding is unwilling to accept the public odium of his position and also slowly comes to believe that he should not accept his income unless he can be certain it was what the long dead founder intended. Thus Trollope succeeds in highlighting and attacking a then common clerical abuse, but in a way that largely avoids attacking the clergy themselves.

I particularly enjoy The Warden because of the very gentle way in which Trollope exposes and satirizes human weaknesses. He avoids being harsh or critical and instead draws the reader into a gentle understanding that author, reader, and characters all share many of the same follies, frailties and self-deceptions. Archdeacon Grantly may often be pompous and foolish, but he is also very human.

The Warden is sometimes seen merely as a preamble to the more elaborate delights of Barchester Towers, but at around 280 pages it is a fine gem in its own right.

You really must. And then read several biographies of Trollope. He is an amazing man.

For many years, the kindly and unambitious Rev. Septimus Harding has been warden of Hiram's Hospital, a residence for poor men who have nowhere else to go, a place where they may live comfortably, get a small stipend from the estate of Mr. Hiram, and live out their lives in peace. The warden of Hiram's Hospital has also been living at peace, until John Bold, a young reformer, questions why Mr. Harding, as warden, gets eight hundred pounds a year for accepting the title of warden, which does not require him to do much else. The bedesmen living in the hospital get only shillings, and Bold wonders whether the real intentions of Hiram's bequest to establish the hospital, more than four hundred years ago, are being honored in the present.

In this first of the Barsetshire Chronicles, published in 1855, Trollope establishes the gently satiric tone and mood which pervade the series. Here he focuses on the church, its clergymen, and their roles in society, showing Rev. Harding to be a man of honor and trust (though a bit too comfortable and unimaginative to ask the hard questions) and contrasting him with Archdeacon Grantly, his son-in-law, who enjoys the power and perks of his position and feels that the world owes him whatever what he can get from it. The stultifying church hierarchy sees its role as almost royal, above the fray and dedicated to sustaining itself.

The conflict which arises when John Bold and Tom Towers, an arrogant newspaperman, become allies in the investigation of the warden's position becomes even stronger when some of the bedesmen are encouraged to demand one hundred pounds a year. Rev. Harding becomes the humiliated subject of editorials, pamphlets, and even a novel showing the "abuses" of his power. Dr. Pessimist Anticant, the pamphleteer, is thought to be a parody of Thomas Carlyle, and the novelist, Mr. Popular Sentiment, is thought to be Charles Dickens. The fact that John Bold, who started it all, is in love with the warden's daughter creates further complications.

Trollope is a delightful writer whose style is to entertain the reader while raising some thoughtful questions. Though he takes his writing seriously and creates memorable characters behaving, as a rule, like real people, he does not take himself seriously, nor does he feel the need to be a social reformer. His humor and amiability give a freshness to novels like this one, which, despite its age, is amusing and perceptive. His later novels, like The Way We Live Now, are far more complex--but just as much fun. n Mary Whipple

Barchester Towers
Doctor Thorne (Barsetshire Novels)
Framley Parsonage

The Warden is a brief novel, the first of the Barsetshire Chronicles. It tells the story of Mr. Harding the Warden of Hiram's Hospital. Over time, John Hiram's bequest has been faithfully distributed to the intended recipients, but his estate has grown so much that Mr. Harding now receives far more than the hospital's wards. John Bold, a local young doctor in love with Mr. Harding's daughter, feels this is unjust. How will the conflict resolve itself?

Thundering newspaper editorials are written, lawyers are consulted and the conclusions are clear. Yet in the end what fixes everything is Mr. Harding's own conscience. An innocent, trusting man caring deeply for his daughter, for the twelve men in his ward, and for his honest reputation Mr. Harding cannot endure the odium of public reproach. In the end, he rises above the issue in a gesture worthy of Cyrano de Bergerac, worthy of Jean Valjean but in fact belonging to a minor country church official. Inspiring stuff.

I should add one thing. There is a slight element of tragedy at the end. Things don't work out for the best and Mr. Harding's noble gesture does bring harm to his wards by depriving them of his care. A wonderful thing with Trollope is how nothing is cut and dry. He correctly presents real life as being messy, however much we would strive to clean it up.

Vincent Poirier, Tokyo

If I were going to be stranded on a desert island with only one novel to read for the next 50 years, this would be the one I'd want. The world picture it paints is finely detailed and entirely believable; and taken together with Phineas Redux it comprises the most nuanced exercise in character development I've ever seen in English fiction.

Trollope's London is thickly populated with memorable characters, but two women stand out in particular: Lady Laura Standish and Marie Max Goesler. Both are gifted, charming, and in love with the eponymous hero -- a handsome (but poor and socially inconsequential) Irish barrister who finds himself swept up into the world of parliamentary politics.

Without giving away too much, Lady Laura becomes a kind of study thwarted passion. She is riveting; a sad, tragic figure but one the reader never stops caring about. Trollope considered her to be the best character in the novel, and one of his finest literary achievements. Phineas proposes marriage to Lady Laura, and she rejects him, pledging herself instead to a rich man she does not love. This rejection happens quite early in Phineas Finn, but it haunts the characters through both Phineas novels like original sin and propels the entire plot.

About Madame Max I feel I can't safely say too much without spoiling everything, but she is, to my mind, utterly captivating and the actual best character in the books. The scene in which she seduces the Old Duke by allowing him to catch a glimpse of her perfectly turned ankle is the best written seduction scene I've ever had the pleasure to read anywhere. One doesn't usually think of Trollope as a steamy sort of writer, but this is certainly very very erotic stuff.

Another reviewer states that many feel the conclusion of Phineas Finn to be rather weak. Perhaps. But Trollope says that Phineas Finn and Phineas Redux should be understood to comprise but a single narrative. I suspect that many readers who've had the patience to read through both novels will agree with me in stating that the conclusion to the latter novel is probably the most gratifying they have ever read, but it wouldn't be so had the first novel ended in any other way.

Recently, a personal tragedy resulted in a rare hiatus in my reading. In attempting to return to normal, I found the only author that suited (and soothed) me was Anthony Trollope. As an English major at Dartmouth, I never encountered his works, and none were on the required reading list; yet now, there are few writers who can "embed" me in their world so easily as Trollope.

This is the second of the Palliser series of six novels, the first of which was CAN YOU FORGIVE HER? Although it is not a prerequisite to understanding PHINEAS FINN, I recommend that readers start at the beginning, so that they have some idea of British parliamentary politics in the mid 19th century and the characters of Plantagenet Palliser, his wife Lady Glencora and their circle.

To begin with, there was at that time no monetary recompense for being a member of the House of Commons. The assumption was that: (1) the member was independently wealthy or (2) the member had a day job which paid his bills. This becomes an overriding issue in the novel.

Enter Phineas Finn, an engaging Irishman, who gives up the practice of law to run for an Irish seat in the House -- much to the consternation of his friends and relatives who worry how he is to make ends meet. He joins in with a group of Liberal politicians centered around Lord Beresford and his beautiful daughter, Lady Laura Standish. No sooner does Phineas get up the courage to propose to her than he finds he has been beaten to the punch by a wealthy Scottish member, who happens to be a dour and rigid Presbyterian.

Next he targets Violet Effingham, who has an on-again, off-again relationship with Lord Chiltern, the brother of Lady Laura. In targeting Violet, Phineas runs up against the choleric Chiltern, whose "red hair is no lie," to quote one of my favorite lines in THE QUIET MAN. The two actually fight a duel across the Channel on a Belgian beach with no serious injory to either party. But Violet makes up her mind for Lord Chiltern, and Phineas is out in the cold again.

As Phineas eventually makes it into the Treasury, which does carry some salary, he meets a beautiful wealthy Jewess named Mme Max Goesler, who has some feelings for him. Unfortunately, he had fallen under the tutelage of Mr. Monk, another Liberal politican who runs up against the prevailing political winds in the house. Not only does Phineas become a victim for his principles, but the Liberals are voted out; and Phineas is out of a job and flat broke.

He returns to Ireland, marries an old childhood sweetheart, and gets a sinecure position in Cork as the Tories busily redraw the political map under Disraeli (called Daubeny in the novel).

In addition to being a charmer -- though a bit feckless at times -- Phineas finds himself liked wherever he goes. Mind you, not enough to nab a beautiful, wealthy wife -- but there is a sequel to come called PHINEAS REDUX, which I am reading now, in which Phineas makes a comeback in his old haunts.

As in all of my favorite Trollope novels, there are the obligatory fox hunting scenes, including one in which Phineas helps save Lord Chiltern, whose horse rolls over on him. He even saves the life of Mr Kennedy, Lady Laura's husband, by driving away some muggers. There is something sunny about the title character, and this quality shines throughout the novel.

Anthony Trollope wrote some 47 novels: This one is one of the best, and will certainly make for an enjoyable read.

The chances are that "Phineas Finn" will not be the first or the second or even the third Trollope novel that you read. Several Barsetshire novels and "The Way We Live Now" are likely to get pride of place. This is probably fair enough. But that fact says more about the merits of the other books than of any defect in "Phineas Finn." It isn't perfect, but it is a very satisfying novel, indeed - perhaps the best "political" novel since Disraeli's "Sybil," It is "political," that is, not in the sense that it tackles big issues, as "Sybil" does - "Phineas Finn" gives a once-over to voting rights, tenant rights and the Irish but it's all somewhat perfunctory. No: it is "political" in the sense that it is about the lives and fortunes of a public man, and of those who offer help or hindrance on the way.

The core elements of the plot are fairly familiar: callow youth sets out to conquer the world and finds out that it's trickier than it looks. Impetuous young woman enters into marriage full of high hopes only to find out that she is stuck with a bad deal. But then, you don't read Shakespeare for plot. I wouldn't say that Trollope is Shakespeare. Still, it is impressive how much by way of character and situation both writes can milk out of a structure that is almost haphazard.

Other commentators have also noted that the ending to "Phineas Finn" is weak, but I don't see that as a crippling vice: I'm hard put to think of a really good novel whose ending is not weak.

One of the many notable facts about the cast of characters is its great range: we have the home folk in Ireland. We have a marvelous portrait of Finn's landlord, the law-copyist, and his employer, the successful barrister - in each case, along with their wives. We have a narrow-minded country squire and a feckless young playboy. And we have a sketch, brief and incomplete but still convincing, of the grandest peer in the realm.

Aside from the sheer breadth of reach, the other thing to be said about the cast is the extraordinary range of interesting women. Phineas, devil that he may be, catches the fancy of at least one back home in Ireland and three more in London. Trollope is often good with women and here in particular he shows remarkable sympathy and comprehension of what they are up against. And not least of the three is, of course, the remarkable Madame Max Goesler, who is surely in contention for recognition as the most remarkable Trollope character at all-for a lady named Max with a touch of a moustache, she is a Victorian sexpot.

It would be fun to read this in comparison with Henry Adams' "Democracy" another novel of politics in more or less the same period, though on another continent. Meantime, I'm clearing time to read the rest of Trollope's "political" novels, in the hope that he maintains the high standard that he has set here.

This Oxford World's Classics edition contains two appendices titled Explanatory Notes and Who's Who. Unfortunately, they give away plot developments not only for this book but also for sequels in the Palliser Novels, of which Can You Forgive Her? is the predecessor to this work. This seems altogether unforgivable, so I recommend you seek out another edition. The novel itself is quite good if you have a lot of time; I was looking forward to the sequels, but now that I know so much of what is going to happen...

At the heart of Trollope's Phineas Finn lies quite a unique (and perhaps presciently postmodern) notion of politics. However, to get at this theory, we readers must wade through the immense amount of exposition that typifies Trollope's writing. We must patiently and assiduously gather plot details from the frequent and plentiful parlor chat, table talk, and other various and sundry gossip that Trollope uses to advance what is an otherwise exceedingly meager plot. Nevertheless, such exposition, which moves at a pace roughly equivalent to that of continental drift, rewards the reader with quite a keen insight into mid-nineteenth century British politics and its relationship to the reality of human nature.

Perhaps the easiest way to approach the political critique at the heart of this novel is by defining the operative assumptions underlying representative politics in general. In theory, representative government is intended to grant the citizenry a say in legislative process, albeit indirectly. A particular representative is supposed to vote on a piece of proposed legislation in such a way that reflects the greater concerns of his constituency. Prior to the events of Phineas Finn, British representative government is grappling with the issue of whom to extend the franchise based on the criteria of real wealth, property, region of origin, etc. One thus gets the sense that the presence of such exclusionary criteria betrays a rather Platonic distaste for general democracy on the part of the parliament ministers. Thus, in creating a system of barriers or gateways between the public at large and the legislative apparatus, the governing body reduces the potential for an anarchic clamor of myriad and wide-ranging interests on the part of the citizenry, which could potentially derail the legislative process altogether. As a result a properly civic-minded representative may always act for the good of his constituency by exercising his judgment, regardless of whether or not his vote conflicts with his constituents' desires. In other words, built into this system of government is the elitist conviction that the governed may be at times too unruly to exercise its franchise prudently. Therefore, by withholding the franchise from those deemed too ignorant to vote wisely (a determination based on various socioeconomic considerations), and by inserting elected officials between the enfranchised and the legislative apparatus itself, government achieves a normative regularity.

However, with the implementation of such a system of governments also come opportunities to exploit and abuse the system. A certain aphorism-- which I attribute to Michel Foucault, though I am not entirely certain that it is indeed his-- comes to mind: "a system is defined by what escapes it." In other words, because a system results from the desire to perpetuate the plane of consistency from which it emerges, the system must necessarily exclude that which is inconsistent with its purpose. Therefore, around any system arises a margin of excluded possibilities and potentialities; however, those dedicated to the system seek to refine it in such a way as to increase its power to envelop and re-absorb that which it had originally pushed to its margins. Thus any system exists in a state of perpetual refinement because it aims to absorb back into itself that which has escaped it into the margins.

Into such a system steps the young and callow Phineas Finn, a man who is indeed marginal in that he is Irish and a commoner, and it is that position of marginality which the system seeks to incorporate into itself. However, one must understand that the system does not incorporate into itself those who dwell at its margins in order to empower them. Rather, it seeks to neutralize the threateningly unregulated marginality that individuals like Phineas Finn represent by bringing them into its regulatory, normalizing regime, and as we shall soon see, this is precisely what almost happens to Phineas.

With the above in mind, one may ask if whether there is any real benefit to entering such a system, if it is indeed essentially neutralizing and normalizing. I answer provisionally that the system into which Phineas enters, i.e., British Parliament, conceals its regulatory, homogenizing and neutralizing essence beneath a seductive veneer of power and celebrity, and it is this veneer to which Phineas succumbs. That is, it seems that at first a government office offers one the ability to satisfy one's desires, because it is a forum policymaking that also generates a cult of celebrity, and I need not explain the advantages of being a celebrity. Therefore, although we may initially think Phineas one lucky devil, we soon discover that Phineas's various political adventures are characterized by the necessity of forsaking that which he desires. For example, Phineas must abandon his desire for Lady Laura Standish because he cannot satisfy Lady Laura's own political ambitions, and later his political indebtedness to Lord Brantford forces him to abandon of his desire for Violet Effingham, with whom Lord Chiltern is in love. In fact, Phineas soon discovers that posturing, longwinded orations and cloakroom alliances epitomize politics more than any deep desire to get things done.

Mr. Kennedy, on the other hand, is quite a virtuous consummate politician, because he is devoted to carrying out every administrative detail that accompanies government office. In truth though, he is really nothing more than a particularly diligent paper pusher. But, however propitious his demeanor is to the endless administrative duties he must carry out, Trollope nevertheless portrays him as a dry, sober, and nearly humorless. Furthermore, Trollope also portrays Mr. Kennedy a sort of gentle but effective disciplinarian in his married life. Thus we may conclude that political success requires the abnegation, or at least the endless deferral, of one's true desires, and that the most successful politician is one who can most effectively subordinate his desire to the workings of government. Therefore, the system seduces Phineas and his peers with a promise of power that it never delivers, and furthermore the system steals one's position of resistance from him via assimilation into a normalizing regime.

Thus we have arrived at the essence of Trollope's political critique: that the British system of representative government is not dedicated to progress, but to stasis. The government preserves and extends the influence of the status quo through a subtle and complex array of practices: e.g., needlessly repetition of proposed legislature, stupifyingly long-winded filibusters, etc. These practices thus result in a perpetual deferral of desire on the part of plebeian, politician and rising young man alike.

A very satisfactory Trollope novel. His skill at creating characters rarely disappoints. It appears that this edition was taken directly from the Gutenberg online book. There are many typos, punctuation errors repeats of words that become annoying after a few chapters. When reading wonderful Trollope dialogue, the reader does not want to stumble because a word is repeated two to three times in a row or fly through a sentence with no commas where needed.

A wonderful story that hooks you right out of the box...with all the usual "you are there" Trollopian visual descriptions. I think that Trollope was one of the world's great novelists and he does not disappoint here. But the publisher! As noted by other reviewers, misspellings, malapropisms and atrocious punctuation abound and really ticked me off considering the price of this book! There is totally no excuse for this slovenly editing. I think it was done by a computer program...another victim of outsourcing. Another thing is that although the listing is for Dodo press, the copy I received from Amazon was from BiblioBazaar!? So the listed publisher is probably not at fault.

The novel is as engaging as I expected, given my love of Trollope's other works, but this version is really terrible- I agree with the other review that the punctuation editting was incredibly distracting. At first, I thought it was an annoying stylistic affectation that most commas, dashes and colons were missing. When I was reading the first chapter, it felt, at times, as though James Joyce had stepped into Trollope's world. Then I saw several odd periods in the midst of sentences and concluded the problem was likely a crappy typesetter and inadequate quality control of the proof. I've never seen this imprint before, but I'll be avoiding it in the future.

I'm halfway through this book, and I'm really enjoying it. HOWEVER, the edition I received seems to have been copyedited by preschoolers. Most of the commas are missing, which makes it a challenge to decipher Trollope's often long, meandering sentences. And the text is littered with misspellings. Fortunately, it only took a few chapters for me to get in the rhythm of this comma-deprived edition, and I do like the story. I'd recommend this book only if you're a real Trollope devotee.

This Trollope novel has been one of my favorites for years, the character of Will Belton is wonderful, and the episodes between Clara and her fiance Frederick's family are priceless. There is so much to like about this story, it would be a shame for a reader to pass it up.

I have spent the last 30 years collecting Trollope and trying to find his less popular works. He is my favourite author from his time, and that includes Dickens who, for all his virtues, I find maudling. This book is one of those one cannot put down, well plotted although it has all the usual Trollope landmarks - so the question is, how is it one can continue reading book after book of this author, never get tired and always be surprised?

This cheaply-produced edition is repellent to the eye and absurdly awkward to hold or manage. I returned it because of size and format.

CASTLE RICHMOND is Trollope's tale of Ireland, set during the famine. Two Fitzgerald cousins vie for the love of Lady Clara Desmond, the penniless beauty. One has money and title but all that is threatened by a secret.. A finely crafted novel and a gripping read.

I RATE THIS A 5 STAR BOOK. AS USUAL, TROLLOPE WRITES SO WELL AND HOLDS YOUR ATTENTION FROM BEGINNING TO END.

THIS IS THE TALE OF 2 MEN IN LOVE WITH THE SAME WOMAN. THE FORTUNES OF THESE 2 MEN CONSTANTLY SHIFT THROUGHOUT THE STORY DUE TO A FAMILY INHERITANCE QUESTION - WHICH FORMS THE CENTRAL MYSTERY OF THE BOOK. AND AS THEIR FORTUNES CHANGE, THE MOTHER OF THE WOMAN WHOM BOTH LOVE, CONTINUES TO INTEFERE AND ATTEMPT TO SELL HER DAUGHTER'S HEART TO THE RICHEST BIDDER.

I'VE READ A LOT OF TROLLOPE, AND I WOULD RATE THIS ONE OF HIS FINEST. THE ONLY PART OF THE BOOK THAT I FOUND NOT THAT INTERESTING, WAS THE HISTORY PERTAINING TO THE GREAT IRISH FAMINE.NEVERTHELESS, IF YOU LIKE TROLLOPE, DO READ THIS ONE!

I would like to start this review by emphatically agreeing with the other reviewers of Trollope's fiction who say that this is an author that should be immediately re-discovered. Here is a man who created characters that we could not forget if we wanted. We see all sides of his creations, the good and the bad, and there are times when you might even feel empathy for the villians. How many authors can accomplish that?

Castle Richmond is Trollope's romance in Ireland set against the backdrop of the Great Famine. You might wonder if the famine sequences get in the way of the main plot. I certainly thought so myself until I read a brilliantly written chapter two-thirds of the way through the book in which one of the heroes of the story encounters a starving mother and her children. In five paragraphs the book takes on a whole new prespective. Suddenly our hero (and ourselves) become aware that happiness is a relative thing, not something that should be dictated by those we love and how much are in our purses. What an enlightening concept! Anyone who thinks that Trollope is out-dated need only focus on what he is saying in Castle Richmond to see what a truly modern thinker he really was.

Castle Richmond's main plot is a look at two upper class families: the Desmonds and the Fitzgeralds. We follow them through their lives, watching as love is gained and love is lost. We get a complete glimpse into the morals of these people; people who really feel they are doing right no matter who is hurt. I was amazed that the melancholy scenes were almost better written then the happy ones. And there are very few writers of that age and ours that write better dialogue than he.

I hope readers who have read Trollope's more popular works will take the time to read this novel. Trollope obviously loved Ireland immensely, and he need not apologize for setting his story in that country. The land, the people, the circumstances are completely displayed for us to enjoy. It is a comfort to walk in his world, through the path between the elms, through the hilly countryside. I thought more then once that I would go there like a shot if it was offered to me. And that, I believe, is the true magic of Trollope's work.

"The Duke's Children by Anthony Trollope.
Narrated by Flo Gibson.
Performance copyright 1993 by Audio Book Contractors, Inc.
ISBN 1 55685 295 9.

This is came from public library resell market major collection central general.
so, that is library stickers and marks and official making normally include.
Total of 15 audio cassette are in plastic case.
But, the case has been seem cracked tapped and latest dirt.

But, the tapes are still playable and helping to who interesting in listen and think, or purchase and keep, or talk and teach each other anywhere in the world.

THE DUKE'S CHILDREN IS THE GOOD FOR ABOVE, who are in familiar with these area and subject."
[from the experience]

One of the brightest lights of the Palliser novels is extinguished in the first chapter with the death of the Duchess Glencora. Bereft of her vivacious influence the grieving Duke, already reserved and traditional, sinks into stodginess. Far worse than this, he is left with three young adult children whom he fails completely to understand. To say that they cause him many heartaches is to greatly understate the situation.

The eldest, heir to the title, Lord Silverbridge has already been booted out of Oxford for a silly prank. Now he goes into horse racing with questionable companions and winds up as the victim of a major scandal, which costs his father a huge sum. Next he deserts his father's choice for his bride to woo an American girl whose grandfather was a laborer.

The Duke's daughter, Mary, wants to marry a commoner, son of a country squire, a good man, but with no title and little money. The outraged Duke is adamantly opposed to such a match, but Mary vows to marry no other and is constantly miserable.

The youngest son, Gerald, who plays a relatively minor role in the novel, is forced to leave Cambridge because he was away without permission attending a race in which his brother's horse was running. Later he loses several thousand pounds in a card game.

The Duke bemoans his children's foolishness and their lack of respect for the traditions of their fathers. He pays for their mistakes, but vigorously opposes the two unwise marriages. But although he is a strict, authoritarian man, he is also a compassionate and loving father. Will he yield to the fervent desires of his rebellious offspring? The resolution of this clash of generations brings the Palliser novels to a satisfying conclusion.

As always, it is Trollope's great gift of characterization which makes THE DUKE'S CHILDREN an outstanding novel. From the outwardly firm but inwardly doubting Duke to the very sincere but frequently erring Silverbridge to the tragic Lady Mabel Grex, who has the young heir in her grasp only to let him slip away, these are well-rounded figures with whom the reader lives intimately and comes to understand thoroughly. With the perfectly depicted ambience of upper-class Victoriana as the setting, this novel is an absorbing work of genius.

Rascals and confusion, Trollope wrote with all the elements that excited that of readers from the Victorian Era, and that can also excite ones from our age.

Lady Glencora Palliser is dead. This must be understood or nothing wonderful can come of this tale. The last installment of Trollope's Palliser series begins with this sad development. Long Victorian faces grow even longer with grief. Now ex-Prime Minster, Plantagenet Palliser must cope alone with the foibles of his three adult children. As the reader discovers, their expectations are not consistent with their father's ideas. Typical of Anthony Trollope, the story unfolds leisurely for 600+ pages. Regardless, the quiet little story urges one to keep turning the pages. 19th century British politics, social customs, and romantic attitudes seem quaint, even amusing, by today's standards. Much as the writings of Jane Austen, reconciling marriage and money drive the story. Trollope's elegant style is a delight. The reader is lulled into a quiet sense of relaxation. No great truths or insights to report, but good downtime reading. Appreciate the novel as you would a fine painting or a delicate antique tea set. If one seeks a pleasant diversion from the noise, clatter, and electronics of modern life this is recommended reading. Relish the experience. ;-)

The Trollope lover will not think of missing this, the culmination of the Palliser novels, but will love Trollope a little less after reading it. It is all the things detractors of his work complain of -- plotless, rambling, dull, fussy, trivial. It is a story written not from an irresistible energy to tell it, but from a pair of good ideas: to echo the circumstances of the Duke's own marriage to his late beloved Glencora in an ironic way, and to show that the social changes brought about in part by his own lifetime of Liberal politics have resulted in a world and a way of thinking that Palliser himself cannot accept. Maybe a Henry James could put enough flesh on this scheme to render the narrative human and alive, but THE DUKE'S CHILDREN is sadly inert. It is the sort of book that tends to make a good movie: its conception is more interesting than the pages inside it.

The Duke's children are too slight and too dim to hang a novel on; and the characters from previous books who never fail to engage us -- Marie, Phineas, and Palliser himself -- are mostly either absent or seen in isolation, fuming alone in studies and drawing-rooms. The obligatory hunting and shooting scenes are engaging but beside the point, and the presence of Major Tifto and his racetrack story are a great annoyance. The bitter, disappointed Lady Mabel adds some intermittent liveliness whenever she appears, but even she wears out her welcome. (And she is, conceptually, much too near a relation to Lady Laura in PHINEAS FINN and PHINEAS REDUX.)

Finales are never Trollope's best event. He will muff them or mute them or present the scenes of his happy endings as if viewed from a distant tree-top. I could wish the Palliser saga ended at THE PRIME MINISTER, which is superb, with perhaps a little coda telling us how Trollope saw Plantagenet Palliser's future life. That the little coda should be bloated into a mammoth vexation like this one is not uncharacteristic, but is surely unfortunate.

Trollope's best known novels are the Barchester series, which focuses on clerical life and church-related issues, and the Palliser series, which deals largely with politics. The lesser-known Trollope novels, however, include some of my personal favorites; they have little to do either with politicians or with the clergy, but are essentially comedies of manners.

In Trollope's Is He Popenjoy?, young Mary Lovelace is rich, pretty, innocent, and fond of having 'nonsense' spoken to her. Lord George Germain, younger brother to the Marquis of Brotherton, is exceedingly handsome, but also staid, stodgy, and short of money - and he has never spoken a word of nonsense in his life. His elder brother, who lives in Italy, is a bachelor; Lord George has therefore some expectations of eventually becoming the next Marquis. When he marries Miss Lovelace after a disappointment over another young lady - his cousin, Adelaide de Baron - the couple first live at Manor Cross with Lord George's widowed mother and his three spinster sisters. Lady Sarah, Lady Susannah, and Lady Amelia are virtuous women, but stodgy and severe like their brother, and not very congenial company for the young bride. Before approving the marriage, however, Mary's father, the Dean of Brotherton, stipulated that his daughter should have a house of her own in London and spend half of the year there.

In London, George is soon being pursued by his old flame Adelaide de Baron, now Mrs Houghton, while Mary starts a friendship with Adelaide's cousin, Captain de Baron - a young man adept at speaking the nonsense Mary so enjoys hearing. Captain de Baron understands the innocent nature of his intimacy with Mary ('more like that of children than grown people,' as he tells a mutual friend). Unfortunately, the friendship between Mary and the Captain is viewed as flirtation - or worse - not only by London society at large, but also by her own husband.

Meanwhile George's elder brother, the Marquis, has returned from Italy with an Italian wife, and a two-year-old heir of dubious legitimacy. The Marquis seems at pains to offend all his family and neighbors, and George is reluctantly drawn on by the Dean to launch a legal investigation into whether the Marquis's young son really has a right to be claimed as heir to the Brotherton title and property.

I generally enjoy Trollope, and I would have appreciated this novel much more if there had not been such a great many unpleasant characters in it - too many to make for very pleasant reading. Lord George's sisters are judgmental and officious, his mother tedious. Adelaide Houghton is a bit like Mansfield Park's Mary Crawford but without wit, charm, or redeeming qualities of any kind. As for the Marquis of Brotherton - just imagine the obnoxiousness of Northanger Abbey's John Thorpe multiplied tenfold. Worst of all, Lord George himself is quite unsympathetic; when reading the scenes in which he appeared, I could not help conjuring up a mental picture of the repellent Soames Forsyte from The Forsyte Saga.

Anthony Trollope's 47 novels contain many surprises, one of which is this delightful novel, which bears one of the most unlikely titles in all of literature. There is no better way to leave the megrims by the wayside than to immerse yourself into another time and place. Trollope was the Victorian story-teller par excellence. After having read a quarter of his vast output, I have yet to discover a clinker in the bunch.

A notorious curmudgeon, the Marquess of Brotherton has quitted England for the sunny shores of Italy. News filters back to his relatives that he has married an Italian and fathered a male heir, given the courtesy title of Lord Popenjoy. His mother and siblings are in a tizzy, as they are asked to quit the premises of the ancestral home to make way for a return of the prodigal head of the family with wife and heir.

It seems, however, that there is little news and much doubt about the legality of the Marquess's nuptuals; and therefore doubt as to whether his so-called son is actually the heir Popenjoy.

There is a delightful fox hunt (common to many of Trollope's novels), and a stormy marriage between the Marquess's young brother and a clergyman's daughter. She dares to dance the forbidden Kappa Kappa (the Lambada of its day) with a young wastrel, and raises the protective ire of every duenna within a hundred mile radius.

Look for some very amusing -- and controversial -- put-downs of the emerging feminist movement.

This is a good book to start reading Trollope. His two long series -- the Barsetshire and Palliser novels -- require a long commitment. Popenjoy is just right!

This was an interesting, if imperfect, novel of marriage. The main thrust of the novel has to do with a legal battle a COuntess and her daughter, Lady Anna, engage in to assert their legal rights after having been abused by an evil Earl, who married and abandoned the Countess. To assert these rights, a demand is made by the mother to the daughter that she wed her cousin, although no one guesses that Anna is already engaged to the poor tailor who has been her one true friend in life.

I enjoyed many aspects of the novel, primarily how the mother-daughter relationship plays out. The subplot of the book is that we all must separate from Mother, and make our own way, our own decisions. This Mother is especially hard-hearted and single-minded and acts very melodramatically in one scene to the tailor (a really weird, overblown scene I could have lived without and which was incidentally, albeit unintentionally, funny).

Anna herself is a character with many virtues. She Almost gives in but does not do so because she is guided by an internal voice of loyalty. Her love on the other hand is drawn realistically if not in a flattering way. Daniel is almost an anti-hero. Not entirely sympathetic, you learn to like him because he seems real. The 'triangle' between those two and Lord Lovel is well-depicted, and no character comes off as 'the baddie.'

Another aspect I respected was the depiction of law, and how society restrains its denizens into conventional and superficial marriages. I disagree with the previous reviewer who said this was a light novel. I think there are very dark moments and a suspicion about the characters' motives at every turn. Yet, there is decency in many characters: Anna herself and the Solicitor-General being the obvious ones.

I liked this immensely, despite it being overlong and having some over-the-top moments that did not 'go' with the rest of the novel. Still, the novel has great style.

Anthony Trollope declared once that "Lady Anna" was "the best novel I ever wrote". Readers did not agree. Appearing between the masterpieces "Phineas Redux" and "The Way We Live Now", it sold poorly and has been neglected ever since. Trollope blamed this failure on his audience's objections to the heroine's choice of a husband, though similar complaints, much more vehemently expressed, had not sunk "The Small House at Allington". (There Lily Dale remains faithful to the memory of a cad, scorning the devoted attentions of a worthy suitor. Anna's wooers, by contrast, are both good men, though vastly different in rank and personality.)

"Lady Anna" is, in fact, a well-knit narrative with more suspense than is usual for Trollope. Will the courts declare Anna to be Lady Anna Lovel, heiress to 35,000 pounds a year, or merely Anna Murray, a pauper? Which of her suitors, the sometimes surly tailor Daniel Thwaite or her handsome, good-natured cousin Lord Lovel, will Anna prefer? Will Daniel's political principles lead to a breach with his childhood sweetheart? Will the impoverished Lord Lovel find honorable means to support his noble rank? The plot takes surprising, if not astonishing, turns; the characterization is as deft as ever; and there is a leavening of subtle humor, such as Daniel's cross-purposes consultation with a quondam radical poet (a thinly disguised Robert Southey) who has evolved into an intractable Tory.

The book's weakness is that the leading characters are, by and large, decent folk at the beginning and, except for one who falls into a state akin to madness, remain decent, if not unchanged, to the end. Conflicts end in rational compromises. Everybody eventually sees everybody else's point of view. Even the lawyers on opposite sides of Lady Anna's case get along amicably. (One solicitor does have the sense to grumble that such harmony is unprofessional.)

Trollope's liking for this novel may have arisen from the fact that it is light, sunny and fresh. There may be an evil earl in the first chapter and a mad countess in the last, but how pleasant for the writer to be free for a time from the political intrigues, financial manipulations and cynical worldliness of the Palliser saga and "The Way We Live Now"! Moreover, "Lady Anna" was, in its creator's mind, only a prologue. The last paragraph promises a (never written) sequel, where the characters doubtless were intended to meet sterner challenges. There are hints that the scene would have shifted to Australia and America and that the hero's and heroine's homegrown principles were to be put to the test in those lands. Thus the author had much in view that he never disclosed to his readers, perhaps accounting for part of the discrepancy between his opinion and theirs.

No one who has not read all of the Palliser and Barset novels, not to mention "The Way We Live Now", should pick up "Lady Anna". I recommend it immediately after the last-named. It will cleanse the palate and leave a lingering regret that the rest of Anna's and Daniel's and Lord Lovel's adventures will never be known.

Incidental note: The introduction to the Oxford World's Classics edition, the one that I am reviewing, is an extraordinarily silly example of lit crit bafflegab. Don't read it before reading the novel. Read afterwards, its wrong-headed ideological interpretations may prove amusing.

Trollope covers broad range of life in this wonderfully amusing tale of three very diverse clerks and the career paths they take in Victorian England. He depicts them with depth and sympathy and you can't help feeling sorry for the plights their own follies bring upon them. Trollope knew the life he wrote about from his own eventful and long remembered career as a postal worker! Romance and vivid scene painting combine with social comentary to make Three Clerks a classic worth reading for pleasure as well as for the cultural history education it offers.

I've been reading Trollope's works, and coming across the Three Clerks, thought it might be as interesting and as exciting as the novels I had already read. Not so. Generally, Trollope takes his time at the beginning of his books, setting up characters, situations, locations -- so for about one hundred pages or less, you have a rather slow-paced, dull introduction. Then the suspense tends to emerge and the books become difficult to put down until the very satisfying (in most cases) ending. However, The Three Clerks lacks suspense. Partly, this is due to Trollope's negligence in fleshing out his characters; otherwise, it is the result of concentrating on his exposition on the civil service and less on his characters and their private situations. The book becomes Dickensian in some respects, and Dickens isn't exactly known for clarity or excitement. There being no suspense about the characters, and in fact no great interest in any of them, the book is more of an endurance test to read than a pleasure.

One problem could be that Trollope tries to handle too many characters. The Three Clerks of the title are Harry Norman, his best friend and eventually worst enemy Alaric Tudor (who steals his promotion and then his lady-love), and Alaric's cousin, the dissipated and indebted Charley Tudor. Of these young men, Harry Norman in his innocence, having much to learn about the ways of men, women and the world, would have been the most interesting to pursue, but Trollope concentrates on Alaric and his ambitions which eventually get him into a courtroom and jail -- though with a surprisingly light sentence for a man who swindles a client's fortune. The young men are matched to three young women, the Woodward sisters. Gertrude, the eldest, is cold-hearted and ambitious, and though Harry Norman loves her greatly, makes a heartless but intellectual decision to unite herself with Alaric, whose ambition she admires. She pays the price for this, but she does so in the typical female role, always viewing her husband as something near to a god, never blaming him for his failings and his crimes, and standing by her man through the trials that will follow for her and her children. Gertrude, like Alaric, gets her comeuppance, but she is also symbolic of the dependent woman of her time and often of our times, sticking to a man through all insult because the world has convinced her that not only can she not stand on her own, but she deserves no better than to be the support of a man whose ethics and behaviors are questionable. Linda, Gertrude's younger sister, who is loved and romanced but then dumped by Alaric, who cold-heartedly and ambitiously wants the oldest daughter rather than the one he professes to love, is like Harry Norman an interesting character who should have been explored but who gets little mention in the pages of the book. She is superceded by her baby sister, Katie, who falls for the useless rogue Charley and thus falls into an hysterical wasting-away that is so annoying that you almost wish . . . Well, never mind what you wish, but all six of these characters are dissatisfying and foolish, victims of their era and their stations in life. Add to that, we have Mrs. Woodward, mother to the three women, who is very nice but ineffectual and though having the opportunity to succeed, succumbs to being helpless without a man to take care of her. She is of no benefit to her daughters and actually far too negligent in her mothering of them, leading to the disasters and potential disasters in the book. Lesser characters include Undecimus Scott, the villian who leads Alaric astray, who is not as evil as he is expected to be but merely manipulative and conniving, essentially a bore. There is also Uncle Bat, a retired sea captain who makes a home with the Woodwards and generally drinks himself into a stupor. Or members of the civil service who both support or compete with Harry and Alaric in their rise in their careers. Everything ends well for Harry, at least, and Linda -- two good people get their just reward. Charley Tudor turns into a Trollope himself, writing stories for the literary magazines of his day, although the author reproduces his stories within the context of the book, which introduces just another method of dulling the pace and the action of the novel itself. Plenty of pages here to skim or skip, the book could have been half the size but still have retained the essence of the story -- on the other hand, if the author had only developed his characters and followed the important ones more closely, we could have had a finer novel of psychological and moral import.

Rachel Ray is (IMHO) the least of Trollope's longer works. Set in a pleasant country town, with a terribly pleasant cast of characters, the novel is, well, ..... pleasant .... without ever offering anything more for the reader. I suppose there are some who would say that Trollope's genius was to write a work that was as pleasant as its setting, but after seeing how good he is at social novels (e.g., The American Senator, The Way We Live Now) and more excitingly peopled romances (e.g., The Claverings) this book was, for me at least, a real let-down. The plot involves a young girl who is certain of the affections of her suitor even when (highly contrived) circumstances make it appear to all around her that he is, in fact, a jilt. Don't read this next sentence if you plan on reading the book: Surprise! Little Rachel was right all along and her lover in fact marries her. *YAWN!*

Along the way, there are a lot of fairly typical Trollopian subplots dealing with country families putting on town airs, modernization of the brewing industry, and other fun stuff that does illuminate nineteenth-century country life for the twenty-first-century reader. But none of it is particularly compelling, at least not for me.

Bottom line: I adore Trollope and have read most of his output, but if I were to rank his works Rachel Ray would be near, or even at, the bottom.

One must make allowences for the occasional sloppiness of Trollope's writing, given the serialized format and the incredible number of novels he wrote while working full-time for the post office. He always has something important to say and usually says it well. This novel is one of his shortest and one of his best. Like George Elliot and Charles Dickens, Trollope was dragged kicking and screaming into industrialized England in the 19th century. And, like them, he saw beneath the glitz and glamor of new-found wealth and the breakdown in social classes that followed the Reform movement in England. He seems at times to be overly preoccupied with the demise of the "lady" and the "gentleman," but this concern reveals a well-founded alarm over the vanishing of such Victorian values as "nobility" and "duty to others." In this novel he expresses many of those concerns while targetting the Evangelicals, an attack that is right-on and timely indeed. He reveals the hypocrisy of so many of those who are filled with resentment and hatred of their fellow humans while professing to bask in the love of Christ.
I would rate this novel, alongside The Warden, as first-rate and excellent ways to come to Anthony Trollope, who is, in my view, a vastly under-rated writer, despite his flaws.