Miss MacKenzie

by Anthony Trollope

Published 1 October 1986
This novel, written in 1864 and first published in 1865, follows the fortunes of a middle-aged spinster "overwhelmed with money troubles", as she tries to assess the worth and motives of four very different suitors. In "Miss Mackenzie", Trollope made a deliberate attempt "to prove that a novel may be produced without love", by choosing as his heroine an unattractive, middle-aged woman, but as he admits in his autobiography, even in "this attempt it breaks down before the conclusion" and she was in love by the end of the book and made a romantic marriage. At the same time, Trollope also gives a comic portrait of evangelical society in a provincial watering-place. The editor, A.O.J. Cockshut is author of "Truth to life" and "Art of autobiography" as well as studies of Trollope, Dickens and Scott, and the chronology is by John Halperin.

This book is intended for general; all Trollope fans, students of Victorian literature.

Nina Balatka

by Anthony Trollope

Published 20 June 1991
Nina Balatka (1867) and Linda Tressel (1868) are at once unusual and typical among Trollope's fiction. Unusual because they were both published anonymously and set abroad, Prague and Nuremberg respectively, they are typical in their sympathetic treatment of young heroines. Each studies religious rigidity: Catholic Nina loves a Jew, while Linda's Calvinist aunt tries to save her soul by marrying her to a much older man. These fascinating studies of women on the verge of breakdown, in which characters are at their most sincere when they are at their least attractive, reveal Trollope's powers as a psychological novelist. This book is intended for students and teachers of Victorian fiction; women's studies courses; general.

The Three Clerks

by Anthony Trollope

Published October 1978
This is Trollipe's first important commentary on the contemporary scene. Set in the 1850s, it satirizes the recently instituted Civil Service examinations and financial corruption in dealings on the stock market. The story of the three clerks and the three sisters who became their wives shows Trollope probing and exposing relationships with natural sympathy and insight long before "The Barchester Chronicles" and his political novels.

The Bertrams

by Anthony Trollope

Published 27 February 1986
Set in the Middle East, but informed by the ramifications of of the repeal of the Corn Laws and the rise of Tractarianism, The Bertrams is a tale of doomed love and a remarkable blend of psychological insight, trenchant satire, and deft social comedy. Published in the same year as Darwin's Origin of Species its story of the contrasting careers of three Oxford graduates echoes the idea of the survival of the fittest. This fully annotated edition of the novel Trollope hoped would secure him a reputation as a serious author uses the original 1859 text. This book is intended for trollope fans; students and teachers of nineteenth-century literature and history, general.

Barchester Towers

by Anthony Trollope

Published 1 May 1857
"I never saw anything like you clergymen … you are always thinking of fighting each other"

 

After the death of old Dr Grantly, a bitter struggle begins over who will succeed him as Bishop of Barchester. And when the decision is finally made to appoint the evangelical Dr Proudie, rather than the son of the old bishop, Archdeacon Grantly, resentment and suspicion threaten to cause deep divisions within the diocese. Trollope’s masterly depiction of the plotting and back-stabbing that ensues lies at the heart of one of the most vivid and comic of his Barsetshire novels, peopled by such very different figures as the saintly Warden of Hiram’s Hospital, Septimus Harding, the ineffectual but well-meaning new bishop and his terrifying wife, and the oily chaplain Mr Slope who has designs both on Mr Harding’s daughter and the fascinating would-be femme fatale Signora Vesey-Neroni.

This is the second volume of Trollope’s Chronicles of Barsetshire. In his introduction, Robin Gilmour examines the novel’s political and social background and Trollope’s concern with changes occurring in society. This edition also includes a preface by J. K. Galbraith.

For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.


Orley Farm

by Anthony Trollope

Published 1 September 1981
This story deals with the imperfect workings of the legal system in the trial and acquittal of Lady Mason. Trollope wrote in his Autobiography that his friends considered this "the best I have written."

The Prime Minister

by Anthony Trollope

Published 1 June 1876
This book is intended for wide general and gift market; the legion of Trollope fans; students of English literature at all levels wanting to read Trollope in hardback.

Dr. Wortle's School

by Anthony Trollope

Published 1 October 1989
Mr Peacocke, a Classical scholar, has come to Broughtonshire with his beautiful American wife to live as a schoolmaster. But when the blackmailing brother of her American first husband appears at the school gates, their dreadful secret is revealed, and the county is scandalized. In the character of Dr Wortle, the combative but warm-hearted headmaster, who takes the couple's part in the face of general ostracism, there is an element of self-portrait. There are echoes, too, in Wortle's gallantry to Mrs Peacocke, of Trollope's own attachment to the vivacious Bostonian, Kate Field.

With its scathing depiction of American manhood, its jousting with convention and its amiable, egotistical protagonist, Dr Wortle's School(1879) is one of the sharpest and most engaging of Trollope's later novels.

For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.


The Fixed Period

by Anthony Trollope

Published 31 October 1990
1882 Dystopian Science Fiction, alternate history It may be doubted whether a brighter, more prosperous, and specially a more orderly colony than Britannula was ever settled by British colonists. But it had its period of separation from the mother country, though never of rebellion,-like its elder sister New Zealand. Indeed, in that respect it simply followed the lead given her by the Australias, which, when they set up for themselves, did so with the full co-operation of England. There was, no doubt, a special cause with us which did not exist in Australia, and which was only, in part, understood by the British Government when we Britannulists were allowed to stand by ourselves. The great doctrine of a "Fixed Period" was received by them at first with ridicule, and then with dismay; but it was undoubtedly the strong faith which we of Britannula had in that doctrine which induced our separation. Nothing could have been more successful than our efforts to live alone during the thirty years...

The Golden Lion of Granpere

by Anthony Trollope

Published 4 February 1993
Set in a village in the Vosges mountains in north-eastern France, "The Golden Lion of Grandpere" (1867) was written when Trollope was at the height of his popularity. The novel concerns the events in the lives of an innkeeper's family; the relationship between George Voss, the landlord's son, and his beloved Marie, the rivalry between Voss and another suitor for Marie's hand in marriage, and the results of a betrothal based on mutual misunderstandings. A small-scale work, precise and detailed, it demonstrates a skill and level of social analysis peculiarly Trollope's own. This is a romance devoid of political dimension, yet acutely attentive to what a contemporary critic called "the characteristic dress in which the small diplomacies of all kinds of social life clothe themselves".

The Claverings

by Anthony Trollope

Published 1 March 1977
Since its first appearance in 1867, this novel has been acclaimed as one of Trollope's most successful protrayals of mid-Victorian life. The Claverings is filled with contemporary detail and shows, as Trollope often does, the weakness of men and the emotional strength of women.

Phineas Finn

by Anthony Trollope

Published December 1937
Phineas Finn, a red-blooded young Irishman is elected to Parliament by his local borough. In London he wins the love of the influential Lady Laura Kennedy. His career advances, but this is secondary to the social and sexual intrigues that beset him.

Autobiography

by Anthony Trollope

Published December 1950
Trollope's "Autobiography" is fascinating not least for the information it gives about his dealings with publishers and periodicals and the sheer quantity of pages he determined to write each day. It records his unhappy youth and his progress to propserity and social recognition, commenting along the way on fellow writers including Dickens and George Eliot, and dispensing practical career guidance for aspiring novelists.

An Eye for an Eye

by Anthony Trollope

Published 1 June 1992
Written in 1870 but held back until 1879, this is arguably the most melodramatic story that Trollope wrote in his long career and certainly his frankest and most daring treatment of pre-marital sex. It is a romantic and tragic tale set in the west of Ireland. Fred Neville, a young officer in the Hussars, falls heir to an earldom. But before taking up his responsibilities, he resolves to enjoy a year of adventure in Ireland where his regiment is posted. Among the romantic surroundings of the sheer cliffs of Moher on the rugged Atlantic coast, Fred meets and falls in love with an Irish girl of great beauty and mysterious background. His family opposes the match absolutely. Fred seduces his wild Irish girl, and the scene is set for a tragic outcome that far exceeds the adventures Fred had in mind.

The Warden

by Anthony Trollope

Published December 1955
The first of Trollope’s popular Barsetshire novels, set in the fictional cathedral town of Barchester, The Warden centers on the honorable cleric Septimus Harding, one of Trollope’s most memorable characters. When Harding is accused of mismanaging church funds, his predicament lays bare the complexities of the Victorian world and of nineteenth-century provincial life. And, as Louis Auchincloss observes in his Introduction, “The theme of The Warden presents the kind of social problem that always fascinated Trollope: the inevitable clash of ancient privilege with modern social awareness.” 

For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.

The Landleaguers

by Anthony Trollope

Published March 1991
The Landleaguers, Trollope's last novel, is set in Ireland during the Land War of the early 1880s. It is both a documentary record, closely following events in Westminster and the Irish countryside, and a meditative fantasy. A landlord's son is murdered by rural terrorists, a crime that replays the real-life assassination of Lord Frederic Cavendish in Dublin in 1882, and the novel traces the violent disruption of civil life as tenants, organized in the Land League, plot to force their landlords to give them a better deal. But part of Trollope's imaginative response to the crisis takes the form of an intriguingly uncharacteristic sub-plot, in which a young American woman travels to London and tries to make a name for herself on the operatic stage, while her father becomes a landleaguing Member of Parliament. In the introduction to this edition Mary Hamer provides a historically based reading of the sub-plot and relates it to Trollope's own personal stake in the crisis between England and Ireland.

Cousin Henry

by Anthony Trollope

Published 1 September 1987
Cousin Henry, first published in 1879, is perhaps the most unusual and intriguing of Trollope's shorter novels. Trollope's masterly handling of the novel's unlikely hero, a tiresome and timid coward, is notable for its insight and compassion.

Ayala's Angel

by Anthony Trollope

Published 1 December 1986
This is Trollope's eightieth tale. Though it is the work of an older man, it is perhaps the brightest and freshest novel he ever wrote. The story of a young woman forced to choose a husband from among three unsavory men, the novel is remarkable for its wealth of minor characters and it romantic exuberance.

Is He Popenjoy?

by Anthony Trollope

Published 19 June 1986
The year 1874 saw the conclusion in London of a much publicized court case involving an unlikely pretender to an English baronetcy. Trollope responded to the public's interest in scandal with this novel, which traces the claim of a shadowy figure to the marquisate of Brotherton. The novel is full of sensational elements and is highly revealing of the social issues of the mid-1870s.