What Are We Reading? 5 July 2021

[Berkley]

Robert wrote: "
For Lewis in an unexpected mode, you might try "Til We Have Faces," a Bronze Age story with a warrior princess as the central character."

I'm sure I'll give it a try one of these days. I remember one or two disparaging comments about Greek myth in the SF trilogy, so the bare fact that he chose to write a book based on this subject matter does rouse my curiosity. From his bibliography, I see that it came out around ten years after the Perelandra books so it'll be interesting to see if his attitude had evolved over that time.

[Berkley]

Slawkenbergius wrote: "As to 1984, even though the narrative is very compelling, I thought the last section clearly too long. I don't know why Orwell decided to expatiate so much on the torture and suffering of Winston Smith; "

When you put it like that, that first thing that springs to mind - perhaps because we've been talking about CS Lewis's Christianity? - is the deep significance placed on Christ's torture and suffering in the Gospels and Christian theology. It's been too long since I've read Orwell's book for me to say whether I think this is an avenue of thought worth exploring, but now that you've pointed it out I'll try to remember to keep it in mind next time I read it.

[Robert]

Berkley wrote: "Robert wrote: "
For Lewis in an unexpected mode, you might try "Til We Have Faces," a Bronze Age story with a warrior princess as the central character."

I'm sure I'll give it a try one of these d..."

The book is dedicated to Lewis' wife, American poet Joy Davidman. I believe that "Till We Have Faces" was the first long fiction Lewis wrote after his marriage. [Oddly, Davidman's first husband, William Lindsay Gresham, dedicated his noir novel "Nightmare Alley" to Davidman.]

[Robert]

Slawkenbergius wrote: "Machenbach wrote: "I think I always rather dismissed him as Nabokov/Joyce-lite"

That's not untrue, but the Nabokovian element needs some relativising. I always imagine Burgess's wordplay as more a..."

Nabokov grew up speaking three languages (Russian, English, French). After developing a distinctive writing style in Russian, impending exile forced him to develop a new style in English. He chose (I think wisely) to compose new work in English from scratch, rather than translate from his own Russian.

[Berkley]

Machenbach wrote: "Hushpuppy wrote: "Machenbach wrote: " The Island of Doctor Moreau (which made me feel sick)."

Care to expand, I'm intrigued...?!"
There's not much more to say - it was quite literally nauseous to me."

It might be thought of as a horror story in which the apparent monsters are the victims. And yes, it is hard to stomach - I wouldn't want to watch a movie version that really showed what was done to those victims in Wells's novel.

[Robert]

CCCubbon wrote: "Greenfairy wrote: "Hello TLS! I've missed you!
Tech problems once again ; my decrepit machine at first allowed me to read your posts and not respond, and then Goodreads disappeared altogether. I go..."

Good to have you home again, Greenfairy.

[CCCubbon]

Over on Poem of the Week someone posted this link. I enjoyed watching it - it is the thought of an artist stepping into a landscape and here, if you like Van Gogh, you will like this simply for the pictures


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iKSUp...

[AB76]

Berkley wrote: "Slawkenbergius wrote: "As to 1984, even though the narrative is very compelling, I thought the last section clearly too long. I don't know why Orwell decided to expatiate so much on the torture and..."

i found 1984 one of the most relentlessly grim books i have ever read and i read a lot of serious, unsettling novels about human nature. Its due a re-read, its been about 16 years but am sure it would have the same effect. i think the UK tv version from the year 1984 had the same effect, relentlessly grim

But i loved it all the same...powerful points made about the evil of totalitarianism, especially the evil of communism

[Hushpuppy]

Berkley wrote: "It [The Island of Dr Moreau] might be thought of as a horror story in which the apparent monsters are the victims. And yes, it is hard to stomach"

I remember being thoroughly disturbed by it, but not feeling nauseated. Now, I think I was 18 or 19 when I read it, so it perhaps didn't affect me the way it would have later on...

[Hushpuppy]

SydneyH wrote: "I feel articles like these are really just examples of 'preaching to the choir'. "

Hi Sydney - unsurprisingly, I disagree with this.

And you are a case in point: as you say yourself, you feel you are probably the kind of audience ("because I feel almost as if the sentiment is being directed at readers like me") that the article is aiming at, so very much not the choir indeed, and also very much somebody who does read (I don't think either that it makes any assumption - I haven't re-read it though, tbh - that the people who don't read women don't read at all).

If articles like this make you even aware of your reading biases (for me, this was a comment by @aldopaulista/@Alan on TLS; and when it came to science, some of the scientific articles published on bias over the years), then that's a big part of the job done. What we want to do with this information and knowledge is then up to us, but questioning why we have such a (reading) bias to start with might be an interesting - if not always comfortable - discussion with ourselves.

[Hushpuppy]

Slawkenbergius wrote: "one needs a strong measure of willing suspension of disbelief"

And usually, I'd have no issue with this. But perhaps because Atwood chose to create that dystopia in a time and place that is so very familiar, I simply could not quite believe in it (Iran is obviously a very good counter-point).

I know what you mean about needing a break from these bleak readings! I've looked at what I've read over the past year to try recommend something to you, but there is nothing much cheerful, apart from a few books I don't think you'd be interested in (Terry Pratchett, L.M. Montgomery)...

[Hushpuppy]

Gpfr wrote: "Lass wrote: "@Hushpuppy.. Give Margaret Atwood’s The Robber Bride, and Alias Grace a whirl..."

I second that - and Hushpuppy, you mentioned Cat's Eye which I also recommend."

Thanks @Lass and @Gpfr. I had never heard of The Robber Bride before, but Alias Grace was also on my radar. I've only mentioned Cat's Eye because a man on the G recently said btl that it made him reassess everything he thought he had known about women, so I got very intrigued indeed!

[Gpfr]

Hushpuppy wrote: "Gpfr wrote: "Lass wrote: "@Hushpuppy.. Give Margaret Atwood’s The Robber Bride, and Alias Grace a whirl..."
"I second that - and Cat's Eye ..."

I liked her earlier books, too, Life Before Man, The Edible Woman ... due for a re-read perhaps to see if I still do, also her books of short stories, and Curious Pursuits: Occasional Writing 1970-2005. This is "a grab-bag of occasional pieces - that is, pieces written for specific occasions" as she writes in the introduction, from 1970 - 2005.
One of the pieces,When Afghanistan Was at Peace, talks about a trip which influenced The Handmaid's Tale. There's also something on Anne of Green Gables 🙂. And I see the last is Ten Ways of Looking at The Island of Doctor Moreau!
What I haven't been able to get on with is Oryx and Crake etc. Not my kind of book.

[AB76]

Blazing heat in the shires today, so its a linen shirt and long shorts (i wear shorts maybe twice a year)

thankfully an old house stays cool downstairs, bedroom is sealed off and dark, could hit 30c. ( any Pacific NW'ers, i declare right away that 30c is nothing compared to your travails in June!)

I plan to read some, watch some cricket and try and stay cool

[Hushpuppy]

Gpfr wrote: "What I haven't been able to get on with is Oryx and Crake."

Yes, I had heard of Oryx and Crake, and saw Rascal/Anastasia review it recently, but when I looked at the blurb, it really didn't appeal to me... And thanks for the additional (very topical) recs!

[Lass]

@Hushpupoy I too have Curious Pursuits, and long held paperbacks of Life Before Man, Surfacing, Lady Oracle, Dancing Girls, and Bodily Harm. Perhaps a re-read, I wonder how they would hold up?

[AB76]

My non-fiction reading now leaves Doblin as he escapes to New York from Lisbon and moves onto Iran and the Shah

The Fall of Heaven by Andrew Scott Cooper covers the final days of Imperial Iran.

Too young to remember the Iran that existed before the theocracy, it has always fascinated me culturally and as a place. I have read some Iranian novels and Michael Axworthys excellent book on Iran but am most interested in the Shah and how he controlled the nation and how he fell

There is a lot of good content on the net in essays, photos and census data about 1970s Iran, i will be exploring that alongside my reading.

Am also slowly winding my way through the 1000 page Imperial german census of Alsace-Lorraine from 1890(in German), picking through the changes in population, religion, birth rates etc. The gothic script is a bit of a struggle at times (the PDF isnt that well transcribed) but its a good thorough census and like the French Algerian and French Tunisian censuses i analysed in the late spring, its all fascinating reading.

[Sandya]

Robert wrote: "Berkley wrote: "AB76 wrote: "The name is Nagai Kafu, he wrote a collection of short stories from his time living in the USA and other novels
Another japanese classic is the wartime "Fires On The Pl..."

Yes, but who cares? Cupid and Psyche is a high school romance-"Hot boy meets cute girl". Till We Have Faces made me sad, I found it disappointing, and what on earth does the title mean? I have found all CSL disappointing, for the reasons I mentioned-the sly Xtian content. If theology (vacuum deduction) was his interest, fine, but he should have kept it out of his children's books and there is better fantasy out there.

[Bill]

SydneyH wrote: "Machenbach wrote: "I say this as someone who is currently reading books at about a 60/40 rate in favour of women writers."

My balance is overwhelmingly in favour of male authors ."

I kept track of the gender split in my fiction reading (never for non-fiction) for a few years, but have now stopped the practice (though it's easy enough to look over my Goodreads stats and figure it out, I'm not inclined to do so). I feel I need books I'm going to get absorbed in - intellectually, aesthetically, or just in terms of a compelling plot (if I ever get emotionally involved in a book, it has to sneak up on me, entering through one of these doors) - and an author's gender in itself isn't usually a good indication as to whether that will happen, though I will say I'm more likely to pick up a thriller by a woman author.

[Tam]

Sandya wrote: "Robert wrote: "Berkley wrote: "AB76 wrote: "The name is Nagai Kafu, he wrote a collection of short stories from his time living in the USA and other novels
Another japanese classic is the wartime "..."

Nevertheless, Lewis started considering an alternative title on February 29, 1956, and chose "Till We Have Faces", which refers to a line from the book where Orual says, "How can [the gods] meet us face to face till we have faces?" He defended his choice in a letter to his long-time correspondent, Dorothea Conybeare, ...

Personally I found it a quite interesting read, though that was 40 odd years ago so my memory is a bit hazy, but I do remember the twist where the woman who thought that she, herself, was the epitomy of all morality was actually behaving really quite terribly to those around her. Perhaps this is the inspiration for the title?

[Sandya]

Tam wrote: "Sandya wrote: "Robert wrote: "Berkley wrote: "AB76 wrote: "The name is Nagai Kafu, he wrote a collection of short stories from his time living in the USA and other novels
Another japanese classic i..."

I don't recall why she said this-she -Orual-had a perfectly good, though "ugly" face. I read it at university over 40 years ago, however. And what's the point anyway? The only "god" in this story is an invisible Cupid. He has no face either. A better title might be "Till THEY have Faces".

I think, in the end, after growing up in England at a time when there was a huge amount of in-your-face racism directed at Indians, it was brought home to me that a writer like CSL, an ultra-conservative who could not even accept White women as equals, would never have accepted me and was therefore irrelevant. My GFs at uni-both of whom were C of E English majors, loved his stuff, and it was one of them who pointed out the tacky allegory in Narnia, but for all CSL's banging on about God-I couldn't take him seriously. His God doesn't like colored people. Look at the poor old Calormenes.

[giveusaclue]

Had problems yesterday posting up a photo of my multicoloured hydrangea shrub. Have posted a couple of others today with more luck, one taken yesterday and one about 13 years ago which still gives me the horrors, being one of three sets of stairs I had to climb, hyper- ventilating like mad.

[Gpfr]

giveusaclue wrote: "Had problems yesterday posting up a photo of my multicoloured hydrangea shrub ..."

Sometimes photos are too heavy? Not more than 5 Mo. I've had that sometimes & cropped them a little, then they were OK. Of course you may know that & the problem be quite different 😉
Very scary stairs!

[Fuzzywuzz]

Slawkenbergius wrote: "Fuzzywuzz wrote: "I've not updated what I've been reading on this site, out of lazyness"

Same here; lazy as lazy can be...
But, schoolchores slackening permitting, I've managed a tummyful of readi..."

That's a great collection of books you have read. Out of the books you read, I've read The Handmaids Tale and The Picture of Dorian Grey. The latter I loved enormously.

I went through a phase of reading dystopian fiction some years ago - usually I enjoy the stuff, but I didn't get on with The Handmaids Tale. Maybe the story was too harrowing, but I recall feeling quite disappointed by it.

Frankenstein is on my TBR pile, I'll get round to it eventually.

[AB76]

Machenbach wrote: "SydneyH wrote: "My balance is overwhelmingly in favour of male authors (mainly for histor..."

Oh, I'm absolutely sure that my overall reading pattern hugely favours male authors too, and also that..."

Interesting points, i am still unable to get over 25% of female authors a year, since i started recording in 2018. i am finding more and more interesting works by women but maybe more of the "books by the same woman" than variety.

Saying that, it was approx at 5% between 2000-2017

[giveusaclue]

Gpfr wrote: ".Sometimes photos are too heavy? Not more than 5 Mo. I've had that sometimes & cropped them a little, then they were OK. Of course you may know that & the problem be quite different 😉
Very scary stairs!"


Thanks, that explains it. For some reason it was 8mb.

[Tam]

Sandya wrote: "Tam wrote: "Sandya wrote: "Robert wrote: "Berkley wrote: "AB76 wrote: "The name is Nagai Kafu, he wrote a collection of short stories from his time living in the USA and other novels
Another japane..."

Fair point I think.... This also points out that, in his Christian beliefs, he thought of them as being superior to other world-wide religions. Curiously the only black person who I have met who seemed to totally agree with him ,was a black African friend of a friend from the Congo. He told me he was a Christian because he thought that being a member of a religion, that at least in principle taught that all people were theoretically equal, was preferable to having your own life completely controlled by the village 'headman', and the 'local witchdoctor'...

I put that down to the 'moral principles', in the 'Ten Commandments' that are taught as a fundamental part of New testament Christianity

[AB76]

Machenbach wrote: "AB76 wrote: "i am still unable to get over 25% of female authors a year, since i started recording in 2018

Saying that, it was approx at 5% between 2000-2017"

But the fact that you are at least a..."

i agree, the female % would be much higher if i threw in a lot more modern novels. I have become much more interested in female essayists like Didion and Sontag plus the oral histories of Svetlana Alexeivich. The Ramos novel i am reading was translated by a woman, so thats another tick

My australian reading has been roughly 60/40 Male/Female since i discovered Allen and Unwin and text classics 5 years ago. Kudos to these publishers in finding women writers from thee 1940s and 1950s

[Tam]

Machenbach wrote: "AB76 wrote: "i am still unable to get over 25% of female authors a year, since i started recording in 2018

Saying that, it was approx at 5% between 2000-2017"

But the fact that you are at least a..."

I have just had a bit of a count, and all except two (fiction) books that I have read in the last two years has been by a woman. For non fiction the count is a lot more equal. I guess I ought to discourage my son from sending me so many SF books written by women, with seemingly bizarre but cute fluffy 'alien' animals, with six or eight legs and very fluffy tails that always remind me of cats somehow!... I must admit their charm is beginning to wear off a bit... You can have too much of a good thing....

[Slawkenbergius]

Hushpuppy wrote: "a few books I don't think you'd be interested in (Terry Pratchett, L.M. Montgomery"

Yes, I'm yet to try a Pratchett novel. I remember my brother reading quite a few some thirty years ago but somehow I never felt inclined to.

[Slawkenbergius]

AB76 wrote: "i found 1984 one of the most relentlessly grim books i have ever read and i read a lot of serious, unsettling novels about human nature."

Yeah, it's arguably the bleakest thing I've ever read. It's very well done, but boy, how depressing!

[Hushpuppy]

Slawkenbergius wrote: "Hushpuppy wrote: "a few books I don't think you'd be interested in (Terry Pratchett, L.M. Montgomery"

Yes, I'm yet to try a Pratchett novel. I remember my brother reading quite a few some thirty years ago but somehow I never felt inclined to."

Not my thing either but my husband grew up with them, and started buying them for me, and I had a lot of fun, so I am now reading all of them in order. Also picked up Good Omens after the first Discworld I read, as it was "advertised" on the RG... Maybe start with this one? I found it brilliant (except I'd have liked Death to be Pratchett's Death)!

[Slawkenbergius]

Berkley wrote: "that first thing that springs to mind - perhaps because we've been talking about CS Lewis's Christianity? - is the deep significance placed on Christ's torture and suffering in the Gospels and Christian theology."

I didn't think about it that way, and you may be onto something there given the way Winston comes out of it seems tantamount to a rebirth of sorts, or a ressurection (I vaguely recall the narrator comparing his situation to a kind of death).

I thought that maybe Orwell, who was suffering from advanced TP when he was finishing the novel, might have thought of transferring to his main character his own feelings of impending death and the whole physical strenuousness his health condition involved, the toll on his nervous system included.

[Slawkenbergius]

SydneyH wrote: "Ooh! Please share your thoughts on The Picture of Dorian Gray"

It's a very interesting book about the aesthetic movement and the whole decadent atmosphere in late nineteenth century literary milieux. The first time I read it, maybe some four years ago, I was disappointed mainly because it didn't fulfill my expectations - once more a story of mislabeling, or how a novel purportedly belonging to the late Victorian Gothic renaissance doesn't have that much in common with the established canon. In any case, it's amazingly well constructed, the plot unravelling in an impeccable style, and Wilde managed to include some odd bits of Huysman's and Pater's material in the narrative. It also provides the source for many of Wilde's famous aphorisms (via the cynical comments of Lord Henry).

[Greenfairy]

I enjoyed Doctor Thorne, it all panned out the way I thought it would. Trollope had fun with the names of some of his characters, Doctor Fillgrave and a political "advisor" called Nearthewind for instance - quite like Dickens I thought.
Does anyone know if Trollope and Dickens influenced each other?

[[deleted user]]

Sandya wrote: "#18: The Grand Sophy. Georgette Heyer

After the dreariness of my last, Stone Cold Sober, saturated as it was with testosterone and swearing, I needed to read something civilized. I chose The Grand..."

I'm a big Georgette Heyer fan and am delighted you enjoyed The Grand Sophy. It's one of her very best, as is Frederica, so you're in safe hands with that one too. Happy reading!

[Hushpuppy]

Machenbach wrote: "For, whilst we tend to believe that very few women wrote novels until the C20th, in fact the proportion of women novel writers in the second half of the C19th was very high (getting on for half) and fell off during the first half of the C20th as the novel began being taken more seriously as an 'art' form."

Yes, until an illuminating post by Natasha (who could also help Maggie on Trollope!) last year, I had no idea this was the case. In case people want to read it in context, it's here. Otherwise, I reproduce it below:

"It's specifically the novel, and its off-shoot the short story, that from the 18th century seem to have attracted a female readership and allowed first a few and then more women to find work as writers."

I think looking at "more women [finding] work as writers" as a steady-ish progression from mostly-repressed ca. 1790 to within-sight-of-equal today is just not so. This particular repression is quite a recent thing. Female novelists did very well in the 19th century. A summary courtesy of Madame Max:

Of course there's George Eliot. And Elizabeth Gaskell. And the Brontes.

Also, Charlotte M. Yonge (her novel The Heir of Redclyffe [1854] surpassed Dickens and Thackeray in popularity, supposedly the most successful novel of the century).

Mrs. Oliphant, Mrs. Humphrey Ward, Mary Elizabeth Braddon (who rivaled Wilkie Collins).

And then there was Fanny Burney, who was very popular in the late 1700s to early 1800s (she died in 1840) and was an inspiration to Jane Austen (the title Pride and Prejudice came from a Burney novel, Cecilia I think).

Oh, and Fanny Trollope, who wrote Hargrave (one of the earliest known murder mysteries) in 1842 (and about 40 other books, fiction and nonfiction).

What happened after this era is a whole other story, but it's worth noting that The Patriarchy interrupted its ancient crusade against female novelists for just about an entire recent century. It's really not anywhere near so ancient as it's fashionable to believe today.

I've also discovered a very popular author I had never heard until I saw her mentioned when reading Jane Austen's Northanger Abbey, Anne Radcliffe.

[SydneyH]

Hushpuppy wrote: "If articles like this make you even aware of your reading biases"

I was already aware of my own reading practices, and I think they are just fine - I'm entitled to pursue my own interests, just like everyone else. If the article is targeted at readers like me, who already read books by women (despite being under 35), then I'll just say I'm not going to adopt a quota-based system to satisfy Bernardine Evaristo. Incidentally, I won't be reading Bernardine Evaristo or Sally Rooney to raise my output of books by women - because I read the beginning of their works and they didn't appeal to me.
I would encourage female novelists to use a non-gendered pseudonym, e.g. initials for first name, if they feel they will be disadvantaged by a phallocentric society.

[AB76]

Machenbach wrote: "AB76 wrote: "The Fall of Heaven by Andrew Scott Cooper The Fall of Heaven The Pahlavis and the Final Days of Imperial Iran by Andrew Scott Cooper covers the final days of Imperial Iran.

Too young ..."

yes, that was one of my first experiences of the Shah as this fascinating flawed figure. The choice of books on Iran is good but too many cover the entire history of the nation, i prefer more focused studies in my middle age, a sort of pages vs time scenario. ie... loads of pages, less time (500 pages for 3 year period etc).

[AB76]

SydneyH wrote: "Hushpuppy wrote: "If articles like this make you even aware of your reading biases"

I was already aware of my own reading practices, and I think they are just fine - I'm entitled to pursue my own ..."

I really cant stand Evaristo, reminds me of too many over hyped novelists who are just everywhere. Rooney remains on the list,

[AB76]

Hushpuppy wrote: "Machenbach wrote: "For, whilst we tend to believe that very few women wrote novels until the C20th, in fact the proportion of women novel writers in the second half of the C19th was very high (gett..."

dont forget Amy Levy, writing in the 1880s and 1890s

[Hushpuppy]

AB76 wrote: "dont forget Amy Levy, writing in the 1880s and 1890s"

Thanks AB! I wish I could tell you, oh, of course, forgot her!, but I have never heard of her, in the same vein as I hadn't heard of most of Madame Max's authors either.

[AB76]

Hushpuppy wrote: "AB76 wrote: "dont forget Amy Levy, writing in the 1880s and 1890s"

Thanks AB! I wish I could tell you, oh, of course, forgot her!, but I have never heard of her, in the same vein as I hadn't heard..."

she was a short lived english author of jewish descent, worth exploring

[AB76]

Major boo-boo as my tentacles of research twitched about on getting a good census of Iran in the 1970s. I thought "bingo" when i found a 1976 census link but it was
1. in Farsi
2.Using Farsi numerals
3. using farsi dates
(all totally expected, unless you are not a Farsi speaker, ie ME

But i kept digging and now have the english language offical state 1973-74 yearbook which is stocked with data in PDF format

I am always aware that censuses work to control and to contain populations, so i neve read any without one eye on what they "want to say" or "project", to the world outside or their own people.

[Bill]

Hushpuppy wrote: "I've also discovered a very popular author I had never heard until I saw her mentioned when reading Jane Austen's Northanger Abbey, Anne Radcliffe."

Your list didn't include Maria Edgeworth, who I believe is also mentioned in Northanger Abbey (or at least her novel Belinda is, I think).

I highly recommend Castle Rackrent to fans of postmodernism: it features not just an unreliable narrator, but an unreliable annotator as well.

[Robert]

Slawkenbergius wrote: "Berkley wrote: "that first thing that springs to mind - perhaps because we've been talking about CS Lewis's Christianity? - is the deep significance placed on Christ's torture and suffering in the ..."

I think that Winston experiences a kind of life-in-death after he betrays his mistress. The state can drain him of anything. He does his chess problems and accepts what he is given.

[Hushpuppy]

Bill wrote: "Your list didn't include Maria Edgeworth, who I believe is also mentioned in Northanger Abbey (or at least her novel Belinda is, I think)."

Thanks a lot Swelter! Yes, there isn't only one writer mentioned in Northanger Abbey, but I already had to google the author of Udolfo this evening due to my worsening memory... Castle Rackrent sounds very intriguing! I can see Paul has rated it 3 stars while you awarded it 5, high praise indeed.

[[deleted user]]

Bill wrote: "... though I will say I'm more likely to pick up a thriller by a woman author ."..."

I'm always on the lookout for good thriller recommendations (as opposed to crime/police procedural sort of stuff), so do please shout in my direction when you come across a good one.

[Robert]

Russell wrote: "Fuzzywuzz wrote:“…I'm still in awe at some of the writing skills evident here…”

Not only the writing skills. I’m also amazed at how many people here have some sort of immediate access to their inn..."

Once a lawyer pleading before the US Supreme Court said "You judges will not be deceived by words."
Justice Rehnquist replied: "Don't overestimate us."

[Berkley]

Greenfairy wrote: "Does anyone know if Trollope and Dickens influenced each other?"

I remember Trollope in The Warden speaking slightingly of Dickens as 'Mr. Popular Sentiment' - at least, I assumed it was Dickens he was referring to. That doesn't mean he wasn't also influenced by him, of course.

His success came after Dickens's, I believe, so I assume the influence, if there were any, would have run in that direction. But Trollope thought of himself more as carrying on in the vein of Thackeray, and I think that would have been the novelist Trollope himself had in mind as a conscious influence or model for his own fiction.

Which, again, is not to say that Dickens didn't also have some effect on the work of Trollope and in fact on pretty much any and every English novelist that came after him, not to mention some that weren't English - Dostoevsky, for example.