Author

Anthony Trollope

Anthony Trollope
  • The brilliant conclusion to the Palliser novels, this touching story follows the elderly Duke of Omnium, the former prime minister of England, as he struggles to overcome his grief at the loss of his beloved wife, Lady Glencora. To complicate matters, he must also deal with the willfulness of his three adult children as he tries to guide and support them—his plans for them are quite different from their own.

    While his two sons, sent down from university in disgrace, rack up gambling debts, the duke's only daughter yearns to marry the poor son of a country squire. Though the duke's noble plans for his children are ultimately thwarted, he comes to realize that parents can learn from their children as well.

    This final Palliser novel is a tale of love, family relationships, loyalty, and principles, as well as a compelling exploration of wealth, pride, and the strength of love.

  • Unscrupulous financial speculator Ferdinand Lopez, aspiring to marry into respectability and wealth, has society at his feet: well-connected ladies vying with each other to exert influence on his behalf. Even Lady Glencora, the wife of Plantagenet Palliser, prime minister of England, supports the exotic imposter. 

    Palliser, respectable man of power and inherited wealth, is appalled by the rise of this man who seemingly appeared out of nowhere. When Lopez achieves his socially advantageous marriage, Palliser must decide whether to stand by his wife’s support for Lopez in a by-election or leave him to face exposure as a fortune-hunting adventurer.

    This fifth installment in Trollope’s six-volume Palliser series is a brilliantly subtle portrait of love, marriage, and politics.

  • His beloved wife having died in childbirth, Phineas Finn finds Irish society and his job as a poorhouse inspector dull and unsatisfying, particularly after the excitement of his former career as a member of Parliament. Back in England, the Whigs are determined to overturn the Tory majority in the Parliament of the United Kingdom. Since Finn had once been considered the most promising of the younger set, he is encouraged to run for office again. Bribery, romance, and murder are peppered throughout this Trollope novel.

    The fourth novel in the Palliser series, Phineas Redux stands alone as a compelling work of political intrigue, personal crisis, and romantic jealousy.

  • Can You Forgive Her? is the first of the six Palliser novels. Here Trollope examines parliamentary election and marriage, politics and privacy. As he dissects the Victorian upper class, issues and people shed their pretenses under his patient, ironic probe.

    Alice Vavasor cannot decide whether to marry her ambitious but violent cousin George or the upright and gentlemanly John Grey—and so finds herself accepting and rejecting each of them in turn. She is increasingly confused about her own feelings and unable to forgive herself for such vacillation—a situation contrasted with that of her friend Lady Glencora, forced by “sagacious heads” to marry the rising politician Plantagenet Palliser in order to prevent her true love, the worthless Burgo Fitzgerald, from wasting her vast fortune. In asking his listeners to pardon Alice for her transgression of the Victorian moral code, Trollope created a telling and wide-ranging account of the social world of his day.

  • The third and least political novel of the Palliser series, The Eustace Diamonds concerns the beautiful pathological liar Lizzie Greystock. Determined to marry into wealth, Lizzie snares the ailing Sir Florian Eustace and quickly becomes a widow. Despite the brevity of their marriage, Lizzie still inherits according to the generous terms of Sir Florian’s will, which include the Eustace diamonds. When the Eustace family solicitor, Mr. Camperdown, begins to question her legal claim to the family heirloom, Lizzie begins to weave a tangled web of deception and crime to gain possession of the diamonds.

    Enlisting the aid of her cousin Frank Greystock, much to the dismay of his fiancée, Lucy Morris, Lizzie seeks to both avoid legal prosecution and have a true love affair, first with Frank, and later with Lord George de Bruce Carruthers. Considered a satire of the acceptance of the corrupting influence of money and greed in Victorian society, Trollope’s novel blends elements of mystery, politics, and romance in a memorable and thought-provoking work.

  • Anthony Trollope's Barsetshire novels are well loved for their wit, satire, and keen perceptions of human nature. This final installment brings back some of his best loved characters: Major Henry Grantly, first met as a boy in The Warden, the sparkling Lily Dale and her thwarted lover, Johnny Eames, and the domineering Mrs. Proudie.

    Barsetshire's latest scandal involves Mr. Crawley, the impoverished curate of Hogglestock, accused of theft when he uses a large check to pay off his debts. Unable to remember how he came by the money, he feels ashamed and even begins to question his own sanity. The scandal fiercely divides the citizens of Barsetshire and threatens to tear apart Mr. Crawley's family. Trollope offers a devastating portrait of a man oppressed by poverty, social humiliation, and self-doubt.

  • Mark Robarts, a young vicar, is newly arrived in the village of Framley. With ambitions to further his career, he seeks connections in the county's high society. He is soon preyed upon by a local member of parliament to guarantee a substantial loan, which Mark in a moment of weakness agrees to—despite knowing the man is a notorious debtor—and which brings him to the brink of ruin. He must face the awful reality this loss will bring his family.

    Meanwhile, Mark's sister, Lucy, is deeply in love with Lord Lufton, the son of the lofty Lady Lufton. Lord Lufton has proposed, but Lady Lufton is against the marriage, preferring that her son choose the coldly beautiful Griselda Grantly.

    The novel will conclude with four happy marriages, including one involving Doctor Thorne, the hero of the preceding book in the Chronicles of Barsetshire series.

    One of Trollope's most popular novels, Framley Parsonage depicts nineteenth-century country life beautifully, crafted with acute insight into human nature.

  • This magnificent sequel to The Warden satirizes the struggle for ascendancy among the clergy of a cathedral city as they contend for each newly vacant post within the archdiocese.

    The contest for power is between Archdeacon Grantly and his followers, who favor high-church tendencies, and the new bishop and his followers, with their distinctly low-church preferences. Speaking loudly and cleverly for the latter is the ambitious Mr. Obadiah Slope, championed by Mrs. Proudie and the newcomers. Each wishes to become the dominant voice in the quiet diocese of Barchester, but their antics, including romantic ones, reveal that their priorities are more social and political than spiritual or moral.

    Their intrigues and misunderstandings entwine through the lives of many memorable characters and provide a humorous backdrop for an exploration of the clash between old and new ways in Victorian England.

  • Anthony Trollope once said, "A novel should give a picture of common life enlivened by humor and sweetened by pathos." Trollope admirably fulfills his own criteria in this charming third novel in the Chronicles of Barsetshire.

    When Doctor Thomas Thorne adopts his niece, Mary, he chooses to keep secret her illegitimate birth as he introduces her to the best local social circles. There she meets and falls in love with Frank Gresham, heir to a vastly mortgaged estate. With such a deeply depleted fortune, Frank is obliged to find a wealthy wife. And so, at the behest of his mother, Mary is banished and Frank proposes to woman deemed financially appropriate, despite his unfailing love for Mary.

    Only Doctor Thorne knows that Mary is to inherit a large legacy that will make her acceptable to the otherwise disapproving middle-class society to which Frank belongs. The question is, will he reveal the secret before it's too late?

    Where fiery passion fails, understated English virtues of patience, persistence, and good humor prevail in this most appealing of Trollope's novels.

  • TheSmall House at Allingtonintroduces Trollope's most beloved heroine, the charming Lily Dale, to the Barsetshire scene. Lily is the niece of Squire Dale, an embittered old bachelor living in the main house on his property at Allington. He has loaned an adjacent small house rent-free to his widowed sister-in-law and her daughters, Lily and Bell. But the relations between the two houses are strained, affecting the romantic entanglements of the girls.

    Lily has long been unsuccessfully wooed by John Eames, a junior clerk at the income tax office. The handsome and personable Adolphus Crosbie looks like an enticing alternative; but Adolphus has his eye on the rigid Lady Alexandrina de Courcy, whose family is in a position to further his career. Bell, meanwhile, must choose between the local doctor, James Crofts, and her wealthy cousin, Bernard.

  • The Warden is the first of the six classic Chronicles of Barsetshire novels, Trollope's best-loved and most famous work.

    Anthony Trollope's classic novel centers on Mr. Harding, a clergyman of great personal integrity, whose charitable income far exceeds the purpose for which it was intended. On discovering this, young John Bold turns his reforming zeal toward exposing what he regards as an abuse of privilege, despite the fact that he is in love with Mr. Harding's daughter, Eleanor.

    Though the bishop and archdeacon stand behind him, the honest Reverend Harding is caught in a moral dilemma, questioning whether he truly deserves the money or should resign.

    Set in the world of the Victorian professional and landed classes that Trollope portrayed so superbly, The Warden explores the complexities of human motivation and social morality.

  • Phineas Finn is an Irish MPA who is climbing the political ladder, largely through the assistance of his string of lovers. The questions he is forced to ask himself about honesty, independence, and parliamentary democracy are questions still asked today.

    Phineas Finn is the second of Anthony Trollope's six Palliser novels, which together comprise a large, coherent composition that captures the fashions, manners, and politics of two decades of society in the high Victorian period. Trollope's unrivaled understanding of the institutions of mid–Victorian England and his sympathetic vision of human fallibility are informed by an unobtrusive irony that shines in these stories.

  • Fifty-year-old William Whittlestaff becomes guardian to Mary Lawrie, the orphaned and penniless daughter of an old friend, and gradually finds himself falling in love with her. But Mary has already given her heart to the young John Gordon, who has gone to seek his fortune in the Kimberley diamond fields of South Africa. Gordon’s sudden return after a three years’ absence, on the very day of Whittlestaff’s proposal, precipitates the crisis at the center of the story.

    An Old Man’s Love is Trollope’s last completed novel, finished just seven months before his death.