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91st out of 152 books
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188 voters
Dr. Wortle's School
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'...more
Paperback, 222 pages
Published
December 1st 1999
by Penguin Classics
(first published 1881)
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An excellent read by a sadly under-rated author. Dr Wortle's School is once again set in the familiar Trollope territory of the minor clergy and their bishops. The narrative flows at a steady pace, the main characters are engaging, and their moral dilemmas are played out clearly and convincingly on the page as the headmaster of an exclusive preparatory school wrestles with the revelation that the husband and wife team he has engaged to help him manage the school are not what they had at first ap...more
Dr Wortle's School was written late in Anthony Trollope's career and was published the year before he died. My online Yahoo Trollope group has recently been reading books from the last years of Trollope's life and I think we have been looking for a decline in his power to portray the psychology of his varied characters. We did not find any such weakness. In fact, I find Dr Wortle's School full of complicated characters whose actions are not predictable and whose motives are not unmixed.
Dr Wortle...more
Dr Wortle...more
This is a short book by Trollope standards, and as such it really has only one storyline, although there is a romantic subplot so minor that it feels somewhat desultory.
The central story hinges on a peculiarly Victorian dilemma. The eponymous Dr Wortle, technically a clergyman but in effect a school headmaster, runs a successful, exclusive boys' preparatory school. Then as now, expensive private schools rely heavily on reputation. After a long search for a suitable candidate, Dr Wortle employs M...more
The central story hinges on a peculiarly Victorian dilemma. The eponymous Dr Wortle, technically a clergyman but in effect a school headmaster, runs a successful, exclusive boys' preparatory school. Then as now, expensive private schools rely heavily on reputation. After a long search for a suitable candidate, Dr Wortle employs M...more
Surly but goodhearted rector, morally rigid but kind clergyman, long-suffering bishop, nosy and irritating evangelical woman, innocent young woman, love story, moral controversy in a provincial diocese, self-aware and charmingly intrusive narrator... yep, this is the Barsetshire Chronicles in about 5% of the pages. And that's a great thing! The book has some of same flaws as the Chronicles- it's sometimes needlessly repetitive and occasionally long-winded. And unfortunately many of the character...more
In his novels, Anthony Trollope is gifted with such a fine moral sense that it is almost always a pleasure to read him. Within two or three chapters of the beginning, I am cast into interesting dilemmas usually related to marriage. Never have I encountered a writer who is so admirably consistent on such an involved subject matter.
In Doctor Wortle's School, the subject matter relates to unintentional bigamy. A young man in holy orders goes to America to teach at a university and encounters a you...more
In Doctor Wortle's School, the subject matter relates to unintentional bigamy. A young man in holy orders goes to America to teach at a university and encounters a you...more
I haven't been having much luck with 19th century novels lately... Dr Wortle's School at least had the good grace to be very short. The prose is dull, as is the narrative. Trollope's interrogation (if you can call it that) of morality in religious and societal circles is heavy-handed, and his comparative views of Britain and America are little more than caricatures. It never struck any kind of realistic chord, and the pacing is both strange and uneven. The narrator occasionally does some inter...more
Such fun to read. I loved watching the moral dilemma unfold, the reactions and the results as Trollope's characters took their ethical stands. Also, because I finished My Brilliant Career, right before starting Dr. Wortle's School, I was very aware throughout of the subjugation of women. Although women's rights is a very secondary thread in this novel, when keeping that issue at the forefront while reading, the complete unaware self righteousness of ALL the male characters made for a very intere...more
Bigamy figures in this novel, as it does in at least two of Trollope's other novels.
Dr. Wortle runs a preparatory school. He hires the Reverend Henry Peacocke as his assistant. Peacocke brings with him his American wife, Ella, who serves as the school's matron. Then trouble arrives with an American, who, attempting blackmail, reveals that he is the brother of Ella's abusive first husband, whom she never divorced and who is still alive.
This short novel focuses principally, not on the bigamists, b...more
Dr. Wortle runs a preparatory school. He hires the Reverend Henry Peacocke as his assistant. Peacocke brings with him his American wife, Ella, who serves as the school's matron. Then trouble arrives with an American, who, attempting blackmail, reveals that he is the brother of Ella's abusive first husband, whom she never divorced and who is still alive.
This short novel focuses principally, not on the bigamists, b...more
Dr. Wortle has alot to deal with and thus this novel ends up being about 3 stories wrapped into one.
It starts with an overview of Wortle setting up his school at Bowick and then hiring the Peacockes to work with him. But the Peacockes come with a tale of their own... Then Lord Carstairs arrives and eventually falls in love with Wortle's daughter Mary... Then Robert Lefroy who is Ms. Peacocke's brother-in-law comes to make some trouble. And through it all Mrs Stantiloup is bent on ruining the do...more
It starts with an overview of Wortle setting up his school at Bowick and then hiring the Peacockes to work with him. But the Peacockes come with a tale of their own... Then Lord Carstairs arrives and eventually falls in love with Wortle's daughter Mary... Then Robert Lefroy who is Ms. Peacocke's brother-in-law comes to make some trouble. And through it all Mrs Stantiloup is bent on ruining the do...more
Reminiscent of Wilkie Collins' "No Name" http://www.thingsmeanalot.com/2010/10..., but done in a very lomg winded, alost clumsy way. There's a nod to social critique, but that's not really the point of the book, whereas that is the main project of Collin's in "No Name."
A small masterpiece. Up til now Barchester Towers has been my favorite Trollope novel, but this has maybe replaced it. Trollope treading into Hardy territory, perhaps before Hardy got there, tackling the Victorian mores and self-righteousness, and the conflict of the letter and the spirit in religion. A fine fine read.
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An interesting insight into a flawed Victorian philosophy and the struggles many went through in feeling "beyond their time" in terms of religious ethics and moral relativism. I liked the premise, but ultimately found it a little dull.
Small, but perfectly formed. It's as if Trollope has decided to distil his essence into a simple, short novel - everything you expect of this master is here in miniature. I can't see why this is not better known unless it's that the dilemma faced by the characters is so alien to modern society - but the same could be said of most of Hardy - anyway, if you haven't read this, then do.
Feb 03, 2011
Dona
rated it
4 of 5 stars
·
review of another edition
Shelves:
audiobooks,
2011-books-read
Although this was not my favorite Trollope novel, it was still very enjoyable. Trollope's portrayal of America, Americans and the scandalous southern Lefroy brothers made for a fun read. I would have rated it 4.5 or 4.75 if it were possible.
It's Trollope, so it has to be good. This is a short one, centered on one vexing problem: a minister unwittingly marries a widow who unwittingly is not.
One of my favorite Trollope books. Very engaging, funny. Highly recommend!
May 07, 2011
K.
rated it
5 of 5 stars
·
review of another edition
Recommended to K. by:
krislynelliott@yahoo.com
Shelves:
regency-and-victorian-british-era
Wonderful small Trollope. Loved every moment of the reading time.
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Wonderful, wonderful story.
It was lovely to return to Trollope after a long break and surprisingly relevant to today.
Trollope gets in his digs at Victorian hypocrisy in more of a forthright manner than his lengthier novels. Both Dr. Wortle and Mr. Peacocke stick to their guns in not getting in a tizzy over the "technicality" of the bigamous marriage, until the situation can be properly sorted out. I wasn't as wild about the romantic sub-plot as others, finding it a distracting method of filling out the book.
I love Anthony Trollope.I love his sense of Society, Church and 1800's England. This is one of his last books and attached to no other. It surprised me as a reader several times. As always, I was delighted.
It's not my favorite work by Trollope, but it's still very enjoyable.
Enjoyable. Amazing delema and resolution.
Oct 03, 2007
Esther
rated it
5 of 5 stars
·
review of another edition
Shelves:
mine_and_i_am_keeping_it
Classic Trollope
Jun 08, 2013
Grace
rated it
2 of 5 stars
·
review of another edition
Shelves:
british-literature,
fiction
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Anthony Trollope became one of the most successful, prolific and respected English novelists of the Victorian era. Some of Trollope's best-loved works, known as the Chronicles of Barsetshire, revolve around the imaginary county of Barsetshire; he also wrote penetrating novels on political, social, and gender issues and conflicts of his day.
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“And now, O kind-hearted reader, I feel myself constrained, in the telling of this little story, to depart altogether from the principles of story telling to which you probably have become accustomed and to put the horse of my romance before the cart. There is a mystery respecting Mr and Mrs Peacocke which, according to all laws recognised in such matters, ought not to be elucidated till, let us say, the last chapter but two, so that your interest should be maintained almost to the end, -- so near the end that there should be left only space for those little arrangements which are necessary for the well-being, or perhaps for the evil-being, of our personages. It is my purpose to disclose the mystery at once, and to ask you to look for your interest, -- should you choose to go on with my chronicle, -- simply in the conduct of my persons, during this disclosure, to others. You are to know it all before the Doctor or the Bishop, -- before Mrs. Wortle or the Hon Mrs Stantiloup, or Lady De Lawle. You are to know it all before the Peacockes become aware that it must necessarily be disclosed to any one. It may be that when I shall have once told the mystery there will no longer be any room for interest in the tale to you. That there are many such readers of novels I know. I doubt whether the greater number be not such. I am far from saying that the kind of interest of which I am speaking – and of which I intend to deprive myself, -- is not the most natural and the most efficacious. What would the ‘Black Dwarf’ be if every one knew from the beginning that he was a rich man and a baronet? – or ‘The Pirate,’ if all the truth about Norna of the Fitful-head had been told in the first chapter? Therefore, put the book down if the revelation of some future secret be necessary for your enjoyment. Our mystery is going to be revealed in the next paragraph, -- in the next half-dozen words. Mr and Mrs Peacocke were not man and wife.”
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