Introduction to "The Trollope Project"

[Brian E]

Sorry, Elizabeth, if I'm spying a bit but, after my post, I saw that you still have 100 pages or so left in Finny2 and are tackling Pamela. You may need a break from pre-20th Century Brits before the Prime Minister anyway.

[Rosemarie, Moderator]

I plan on binge reading the Palliser series in the hopes of catching up with the group in January. One of the reasons I didn't continue after Can You Forgive Her? was a need to read something other than Victorian fiction.

[Frances, Moderator]

I don’t understand, Rosemarie.... :)

[LiLi]

Haha, Brian, it often seems that pre-20th C. Britain is where I find myself. :D I have been trying to alternate the Victorians with a nonfiction or contemporary book, but lately I haven't been reading fast enough to make that possible.

I'm actually listening to _Pamela_ on LibriVox; so, I can at least do things around the house while I'm listening.

[Rosemarie, Moderator]

😆Frances
I did read a shorter Trollope novel called The Golden Lion of Granpere, so I wasn't completely withdrawn from Trollope. But he did publish it under a pen-name.

[Robin P, Moderator]

This schedule is fine with me. By the way, I see PBS will be showing a version of The Woman in White sometime this season (maybe Britain has already had it.)

[Brian E]

Robin wrote: "This schedule is fine with me. By the way, I see PBS will be showing a version of The Woman in White sometime this season (maybe Britain has already had it.)"

Yes, BBC One in Britain showed it in April and May.
PBS will show it in the U.S. at 10 Eastern/9 Central for 5 Sunday nights from October 21st to November 18th.
It will follow the Durrells in Corfu and Poldark at the 2 earlier hours.

[LiLi]

With that many instalments, it can't be the Andrew Lloyd Webber musical version...

[Frances, Moderator]

I'm planning to start The Duke's Children in mid-January. On that note, there is a recent edition described thus on amazon: Trollope wrote The Duke’s Children, his final Palliser novel, as a four-volume work but was required by his publisher to reduce it to three, necessitating the loss of nearly sixty-five thousand words. A team of researchers led by Steven Amarnick has worked with the manuscript at Yale’s Beinecke Library to restore the novel to its original form. The result is richer and more complex, with a subtly different ending, a clearly superior book to the one that has always been published.

As far as I know this restored edition is only available in hardback and not necessarily available at public libraries, so I will be using the version published earlier. That being said, I assume it will be easy to read the new version and follow where the discussion is going.

[Phrodrick slowed his growing backlog]

Frances wrote: "I'm planning to start The Duke's Children in mid-January. On that note, there is a recent edition described thus on amazon: Trollope wrote The Duke’s Children, his final Palliser nove..."

What you are describing is the Everyman edition. At 27 USD it is not exactly cheap but is a nicely done edition. Ribbon book mark n all.
about 200 or so more pages.
by now there should be a fair number of 2nd hand copies about

[LiLi]

Oh no! what am I going to do with the Cambridge edition I picked up in the charity shop?

it's interesting to know that this other edition exists. I'm very tempted to get it.

...Ha! The Kindle edition of the restored version is only $2.69...quite a bit less expensive.

[LiLi]

Mid-January sounds great. I'm going to try to finish _Three Musketeers_ before then.

[Christopher]

My library has it. I wondered what Trollope was doing in the 'new books' section (about this time last year).

The Everyman edition superseded a much more expensive Folio Society edition:

https://www.foliosociety.com/usa/the-...

[Christopher]

Elizabeth wrote: "...Ha! The Kindle edi..."

Look closely!

I think that $2.69 Kindle edition is not legit. Just the PD text with the Everyman cover.

https://www.amazon.com/Dukes-Children...

Hucksters everywhere!

[LiLi]

Oh, that's terrible! Thanks for the heads-up!

[Robin P, Moderator]

I'm not sure I want one-third again as much Trollope, which is what the complete version is. Unlike Dickens, who mostly developed over his lifetime and became more complex (and left me wanting more), I am finding Trollope the same over and over. My favorite books are still from the Barchester series, where there was more humor.

[Rosemarie, Moderator]

I will be reading the Penguin version that I bought second-hand two years ago.

[Lori, Moderator]

Our library doesn't have the longer version and I don't really want to buy it, so I'll also be reading the regular one that comes free on Amazon.

Is it too soon to figure out who we want to read next? :-D

[Phrodrick slowed his growing backlog]

Robin wrote: "I'm not sure I want one-third again as much Trollope, which is what the complete version is. Unlike Dickens, who mostly developed over his lifetime and became more complex (and left me wanting more..."

Trollope project or not, I do not think I can do another 4000+ pages of Trollope.
I do have another of his works on my TBR The American Senator but not another set of goat chokers. If you guys have done this one then I think I am one and done. Otherwise I am in for this book six, long version, but I may sit out until you get to the Senator.

That said I am most impressed with what some of you may think of as repetitions. I read them as theme and variation. There is an almost scientific progression of the various ways slightly different people, either become families/ join families or do not.

I only know these books so a question to those who have been in from the beginning:

I see a lot about fathers and sons, daughters and fathers but only as the children are adults or about to become adults.
Sisters seem to have important existence and aunts figure to some degree. Wives are certainly visible.

Is there in these books or others any Moms, nearly as central as dads. Do moms do more than advise when it is time to marry off or otherwise direct the marriage/money decisions of their off spring?

The Duchess, Cora strikes me as more like an exception who proves the rule, but only just.

It is reasonable to note the number of central characters who have no moms. Given the state of medicine in this periods, death in childbirth was fairly common. That said there seems to be an unspoken rule that however much influence women have in their respective social circles, moms - as moms are not import entities in these 6 books.

[Lori, Moderator]

Phrodrick wrote: "It is reasonable to note the number of central characters who have no moms. "

I noticed the same in Walter Scott's books (did a marathon of them a few years back). With a few notable exceptions, moms were absent. Scott wrote strong women better than Dickens did, and possibly better than Trollope. (Although, being Scott, he often wrote characters, male and female, that were implausibly larger than life.)

[Abigail]

Henry James??

[Frances, Moderator]

Just to clarify-my original post on The Duke's Children did not format correctly-I meant to say that i will work from the previously published (shorter) edition so Elizabeth you're Cambridge edition is fine.

[Frances, Moderator]

Lori wrote: "Phrodrick wrote: "It is reasonable to note the number of central characters who have no moms. "

I noticed the same in Walter Scott's books (did a marathon of them a few years back). With a few not..."

Phineas Finn's mother, Mr Kennedy's mother are the only ones I can think of in this series. In Barsetshire there are many mothers present who play more important roles-Mrs Grantly, Mrs Dale, Lady Arabella spring to mind but I know there are more.

[LiLi]

Thanks, Frances; I'm just very curious about the longer version now that I know that it exists. However, I've been vacillating a bit because it's not the version the Victorians themselves would have read.

I stupidly bought that Kindle version, so now I'm going to try to return it and explore what my options for the longer version on Bol and Amazon DE and FR are. I'd rather not import from America, but I guess I'll decide when I have more info. My copy of _Phineas Redux_ was an Oxford University Press (I miswrote Cambridge, which is where I bought it), so as a copy of the shorter version I have reason to believe it would be fine.

[Robin P, Moderator]

About mothers and children - as opposed to Dickens, there are very few children. The ones in The Warden are literally political caricatures, not intended to be actual people. There are children in Framley Parsonage of the Rev. Crawley, suffering due to their fathers pride. But otherwise they are invisible, and it sounds like in The Duke's Children, they are grown. But it would be reasonable that Glencora would start trying to manage her children's careers once her husband is out of power.

The missing mother is an easy way to put young people on their own, as well as setting up the father for a new wife. (As in so many fairy tales and movies!) We do have a few widows, such as Mme Max and Laura Kennedy.

[Linda]

As everyone has noted, Trollope didn't portray children in the Palliser series. Even though Glencora is dedicated to her children's welfare (being very concerned her son will inherit instead of any possible offspring of a marriage between Madame Max and the old Duke), we never really meet the children. Until they are adults in the final volume.
Only Sexty Parker's family is portrayed to any extent at all, with the emphasis being on Mrs. Parker as an almost equal partner in their marriage and willing to go to great lengths to protect her husband and children. Her sincere motherhood being rewarded by Mr. Wharton. But the children aren't developed as characters at all.
Even in He Knew He Was Right where a child plays an important role as a plot device, Trollope doesn't develop him as a full fledged character either. I haven't read much of Trollope beyond Barsetshire and Palliser, but it wouldn't surprise me if children and /or developed parental relationships were absent on the whole in his other novels.

[Frances, Moderator]

Hello everyone, As we draw to the close of our Trollope project, I was wondering if anyone is interested in reading a biography of Trolloe. It would ultimately go to a poll (this would be likely the last read in our project so wouldn't replace our group read) but wanted to sound out those of you who have been involved in the project first.

Let us know if you would be interested in participating in a Biography read.

[Lori, Moderator]

Frances wrote: "Hello everyone, As we draw to the close of our Trollope project, I was wondering if anyone is interested in reading a biography of Trolloe. It would ultimately go to a poll (this would be likely th..."

I probably wouldn't participate. But I don't mind a short break if others want to read it.

[Brian E]

I own and have read one Trollope biography: Trollope: An Illustrated Biography
by C.P. Snow
It was OK, with good illustrations. I don't think I'm up for another biography right now.

[Bonnie]

Frances wrote: "Hello everyone, As we draw to the close of our Trollope project"
Aren't there lots of books to go yet?

[Robin P, Moderator]

There are MANY standalone books. The original project was to do these 2 series which between them were about the same as the Dickens project. Personally, I have had enough Trollope for a while.

[Rosemarie, Moderator]

I agree with you, Robin. I really enjoyed the books but need a change from Victorian fiction.

[Brian E]

I wasn't here for the Dickens project, but I see you did his entire set of novels. I imagine readers hopped on for a few or many and wonder if anyone read them all in the project. Quite a feat. Although I am a big Trollope fan, I agree that 12 Trollope's is a sufficient project - I've read 6 or 7 of his stand-alones, but he has so many I plan on reading one a year until I die.

I can see that after about 30 Victorian books, that is certainly enough Victorian. Will you moderators pick another author or what do you do? I can't think of too many non-Victorian authors with such a varied repertoire to read that would attract readers to read or re-read. Balzac's La Comedie-Humaine or Zola's Rougon-Macquart have many books but will many readers stick with the project? (The group recently read 2 Balzac's). For Brit non-Victorians you have Austen and Scott and many here probably have read all the Austens, possibly several times.

I wish the moderators good luck. I don't envy your job.

[Rosemarie, Moderator]

Thank you, Brian. But we couldn't do it without our fantastic members!

[Robin P, Moderator]

I happened to join this group right before the Dickens project started and did the whole thing. Madge was here for it, I'm not sure who else. It was a good time for it because it was the 200th anniversary of Dickens' birth.

Balzac and Zola both are huge undertakings. A group of us started Zola but we did them in chronological order and his first few books weren't the best so we petered out. The group has pretty much done Jane Austen in that most of the books have been read in the last few years, though not in a row.

One suggestion was for Mark Twain, but again this group has read several of his novels. About half his books are travel writing with some humor rather than novels.

Moderators are of course open to suggestions from the members, but there needs to be a core group that commits to an ongoing project like that.

[Bonnie]

Robin wrote: "There are MANY standalone books. The original project was to do these 2 series which between them were about the same as the Dickens project. "

Oh, I did not know that! I thought the Dickens Project did all his novels, and the Trollope Project would do all of Trollope's.

[Phrodrick slowed his growing backlog]

no idea who would suggest The Pearl.
Not me
no way I would suggest it
never touched it myself
I am way too much of an innocent lamb for Anything Like That
So if its The Pearl count me out. in fact forget I even mentioned it
I mean
I didnot , not really
besides I deny it

[Lori, Moderator]

Someone, I don't remember who, suggested Henry James at some point.

I have a lot of books by Wilkie Collins on my to-read list (I've only read the Moonstone so far), but I understand if others aren't up for another Victorian British male after Dickens and Trollope.

I also have Sheridan Le Fanu on my list - I've never read anything by him.

Trying to think of a woman or someone who's not British. I've pretty much read all of Austen and Eliot, and most of the major books by Tolstoy and Dostoevsky (once upon a time when I had much more time to read than I do now!).

Do Theodore Dreiser or Elizabeth Gaskell have enough books for a project? My brain is fried. Anyone else have some suggestions?

[Bonnie]

Before this I had read only three Anthony Trollope Books; I have certainly enjoyed this experience and now knowing "what the deal is" with Barchester and Palliser series.

Thank you to the moderators and everyone.

I don't know which is my favorite of the 12, but I think The Eustace Diamonds was my least favorite: more sensationalistic, less believable, didn't like what's-her-name, thought that friendship with the two ladies especially the bizarre one who didn't want to get married, was too weird and didn't go anywhere.

[Bonnie]

Phrodrick wrote: "no idea who would suggest The Pearl.
Not me
no way I would suggest it
never touched it myself
I am way too much of an innocent lamb for Anything Like That
So if its The Pearl count me out. in fact ..."

John Steinbeck?

[Phrodrick slowed his growing backlog]

I think it was Arne Nomouse or something like that

[Bonnie]

Too early for the group!
:-\

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gawai...

[Bonnie]

Phrodrick wrote: "no idea who would suggest The Pearl.
Not me
no way I would suggest it
never touched it myself
I am way too much of an innocent lamb for Anything Like That
So if its The Pearl count me out. in fact ..."

This is probably an homage to the actual poem, written in proper meter and all that??!!!!
Or a G&S song?!

[Brian E]

Robin wrote: "I happened to join this group right before the Dickens project started and did the whole thing. Madge was here for it, I'm not sure who else. It was a good time for it because it was the 200th anni..."

Wow, you went through the entire set of Dickens. Congratulations. I'm not a great Dickens fan, but he has such stature, along with the cultural influence of his books, that I would have read several more in addition to the 5 I have read already, though Bleak House is my only must-read left.
Yes, that is quite the accomplishment, especially over a fairly compact time period.

[Robin P, Moderator]

Elizabeth Gaskell would be a good one, but once again, this group has read at least 3 of her books in the last few years.

My favorite Trollope is still Barchester Towers. It has the most satire and some wonderful villains. There is a lot less of the sentimental romance and faithful young women than in the later books, also no politics, except for church politics.

[Frances, Moderator]

Thanks for all your suggestions/comments so far. I've opened a new thread under nominations so that those in the group not participating in the Trollope read can comment. Please consider commenting there and feel free to copy and paste your comments from here if you like.

[Frances, Moderator]

Thanks for your votes, clearly there is interest in more Trollope. As there are lots of novels to choose from, I've used "best Trollope" lists, Boxall's 1001 books list, availability of books on Amazon and at my local public library, and an attempt to choose from different times in his career to propose the following 5 novels:

Orley Farm (1862)
The Claverings (1866)
He Knew He Was Right (1869)
The Way We Live Now(1875)
Ayala's Angel (1881)

The Claverings may be the only one that is hard to find in a book book, but remember everything is available from Project Gutenberg for free.

If there's something you desperately wanted to read that isn't on the list, please suggest it and suggest which book you'd replace as we're going to stick with 5 books. Please check that your suggestion is readily available through one of the on-line booksellers for those who like to use hard copies.

Again, I'll give some time for comments on this proposal and then aim to start May 5th with Orley Farm (unless there is a strong wish to replace with another).

[Brian E]

Frances, my comment is that each of us would choose a different set of books. I bow to your choices, and I do endorse your decision to choose from varying time frames.

Three of your choices are more famous Trollopes that I have read, and are great choices. I had also planned to read The Claverings someday but I had not considered Ayala's Angel before. It does appear to have its fans and is from his last days, so I'm game to read it.

I will skip Orley Farm as I read it in 2015, but would join for The Claverings, I presume around August or so, Ayala's Angel and probably for a re-read of The Way We Live Now.

[Christopher]

I'm really happy with this outcome, and four of the five are definitely TBR for me.

I had never considered Ayala's Angel, probably because it is 'late,' and I thought I would never get to it.

Some others which have been on my shelf:

The Three Clerks

The Belton Estate

The Vicar of Bullhampton

The American Senator

... but I cannot say any of these would be better than A.A.

I was under the impression that American Senator was 45 percent fox-hunting anyway.

[Renee]

I like the idea of working chronologically. We may see some development in style.