Last time I took Trollope to task for his tipping the moral balance of The Warden against the reformers, despite his finding fault too with the corrupt and privileged elite, like the warden Harding’s ‘most coveted of the snug clerical … Continue reading
Anthony Trollope (1815-82), The Warden. First published 1855. Oxford World’s Classics 1994. Trollope’s fourth novel is set in the cathedral town (based in part on Salisbury) of Barchester, and is the first of six in the Barsetshire sequence. Its subject … Continue reading
Anthony Trollope, The Last Chronicle of Barset. First published by George Smith (of Smith, Elder & co.) in 32 monthly parts, each one with an illustration by George H. Thomas, 1866-67; 2-vol. edition 1867 (there’s a feature on these images … Continue reading
Anthony Trollope, Dr Thorne. Oxford World’s Classics, 1994. First published 1858: the third of the ‘Barsetshire Chronicles’. Trollope’s fiction has often been dismissed as commonplace, conventional and pedestrian, from his own Victorian period to Leavis and after, of ‘low literary … Continue reading
My second piece on Trollope’s Barchester Towers elicited a comment from Karen that suggested she now felt less inclined to read it; maybe it was the way I indicated Trollope is uncharitable in his depiction of the vapid non-heroine, Eleanor Bold. … Continue reading
Back from my short break in the city of my alma mater, Bristol – maybe more on that another time. For now, I’d like to look at another early chapter – ch.2 – of Barchester Towers. Last time it was the … Continue reading
First published in 1857, Barchester Towers is the second of the six Chronicles of Barsetshire series of novels. It picks up the story that The Warden related (1855), concerning Septimus Harding’s renunciation of the wardenship of Hiram’s charitable hospital for old men, and … Continue reading
I don’t usually post these ‘look at these books I just bought’ pieces, but today I can’t resist. A trip to town yesterday ended with a happy book haul at a charity shop. I’ve only read one Trollope novel, and … Continue reading
Honoré de Balzac (1799-1850), Domestic Peace and Other Stories. Penguin, 1958. Translated from the French by Marion Ayton Crawford. Don’t you just love those old Penguin Classics covers? Most of these early stories were originally published 1830-32. The title story … Continue reading