Read Ebook: Excursions in Victorian Bibliography by Sadleir Michael

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To my mother, to my wife, and to one of my publishers I owe thanks for friendly collaboration at points where two heads and four hands had more than twice the value of half their number. Lastly, and perhaps mostly, I am indebted, for secretarial assistance and for help in the labour of research, to Miss Martha Smith, whose accuracy and devotion have halved my personal toil.

ANTHONY TROLLOPE 1815-1882

ANTHONY TROLLOPE

Trollope's novels, like those of Jane Austen, are of the very essence of fiction. Whatever they may lack in verbal subtlety, in passion, in tragedy or in comedy of idea, they never lack that spiritual skeleton without which no structure of a story-teller's imagining can survive. Palaces more delicate, more romantic, more brilliant and more terrible than those of Trollope have been erected and have stood to win the admiration of posterity; but their splendour and their beauty are due more to the solid material that upholds their walls and roofs than to the skill and fancy of their decoration. Other palaces, because they lacked such invisible but vital solidity, have drawn for an hour the fickle favour of the crowd and then toppled into dust. It is easy, in fiction, to create a nine days' wonder, but hard indeed to win the esteem of ninety years.

Footnote 3:

For his consent to the reprinting of this Essay I am grateful to the Editor of the "Nineteenth Century and After."

Trollope has achieved that victory. Oblivion can now never be his, for he has lived his bad times and survived. As must any artist worth the name, he suffered eclipse--temporary, indeed, but so severe as at one time to threaten permanence. He was scorned as dowdy and parochial by the brilliant metropolitans of a succeeding generation. Only in the hearts of quiet folk and among readers uninstructed in the genius of their own time were his books remembered and cherished.

Until, slowly and slowly, opinion has begun to change. Quality has outstayed vogue, and the latter comes smirking back to the smiles of a lover yesterday despised. Indeed, Trollope is in a fair way to become once again the fashion. For a while he will be honoured by the enthusiasm of the intellectuals. Then, when they have turned their volatile benevolence to some other quarter, he will settle firmly in the respect of the critical. And that will at once be fame and his deserts.

Any summary analysis of Trollope's individual novels is wellnigh impossible, in view not only of the bulk of his work but also of its scope and richness of content. His quality is more intangible and at the same time more concentrated than that of the other writers treated in this book. "Of all the needs a book has, the chief need is that it be readable," wrote Trollope himself. And again: "The primary object of a novelist is to please." Readability has, in these latter days, become a term of condescension. But that is the fault of a superior age, and for the ten who use the word contemptuously there are ten thousand who, did they care to do so, would give it an older and a more honourable meaning. To them, as always to the large public of novel-readers, fiction, when it is not costume-romance, mystery-story, or topical propaganda, is a revelation of their own lives. It is this demand for an expression of emotions in which the normal reader can share that Trollope so amazingly satisfies. No pr?cis of plot, no indication of social setting, of character types, nor of period, can in his case convey the essence of any particular novel.

Nevertheless his stories fall into certain specific categories, some of which form actual series of tales with characters reappearing from volume to volume, while others, although severally independent and self-contained, may be classified as belonging to one type of fiction or to another.

THE WARDEN , BARCHESTER TOWERS , DOCTOR THORNE , FRAMLEY PARSONAGE , THE SMALL HOUSE AT ALLINGTON , and THE LAST CHRONICLE OF BARSET .

Although these famous stories undoubtedly contain much of Trollope's best work, they do not contain the whole of it. It is a mistake to suppose that they rank altogether higher than his other books, and one of the most disastrous results of the disfavour into which his novels fell after their author's death is that a wealth of really first-rate material, just because it is included in books of which the late eighties chose to forget the titles, lies hidden to-day and withdrawn from the enjoyment of modern readers.

Cases of such unmerited neglect are encountered immediately and among the novels of Trollope's second continuous and interconnected series. The "political" stories, like those of Barsetshire, are six in number:

CAN YOU FORGIVE HER? , PHINEAS FINN , THE EUSTACE DIAMONDS , PHINEAS REDUX , THE PRIME MINISTER , and THE DUKE'S CHILDREN .

It is now necessary to examine that large and heterogeneous collection of novels which, from one point of view or another, satirize contemporary life or present some definite aspect of the English social scene. Let me once more insist that the classification of Trollope's books here attempted should not be understood too literally. All the Barchester novels, all the political novels, are in one sense wholly presentments of society; in the same way many of them contain passages definitely satirical. But they have other claims to special grouping which the numerous isolated stories now to be considered do not possess; and, while satire is mainly incidental to the tales of Barchester and to those of political life, it is in some at least of Trollope's other books the principal purpose of the story.

This novel, like all Trollope's really good work, impresses the reader first and foremost with its Englishry. Perhaps it would not be too much to say that the very greatness of the author himself springs from this same quality. He is intensely English, with the quiet humour, the shy sympathy masquerading as indifference, the delicate sense of kindliness and toleration, the occasional heaviness, the occasional irritability, that mark a man or a book as English. But if to these qualities he owes his place in our proud heritage of literature, to them also he owes the tarrying of due recognition, for they and the natures that possess them are of all qualities and of all natures the most difficult to impress upon the sceptical outsider, seeing that their very beauty and preciousness and power lie in their elusiveness.

This book will be of interest to the general reader, although it is rather overloaded with analyses of novel-plots and the arrangement is not ideal.

No half-titles. Boards, half-cloth, paper label. White end-papers. Also in dark brown cloth, gilt, blocked in blind. Pale yellow end-papers.

No half-titles. Paper boards , paper label. White end-papers.

NOTE--This book was published in July, 1848.

Paper boards, paper label. White end-papers.

NOTE--This book was published in June, 1850.

NOTES-- This book was published in January, 1855. An edition of 1,000 copies was printed, of which 600 were sold during the first eighteen months of publication. The balance of 400 was bound, very nearly uniform with the first issue, in 1858 and a catalogue dated with that year inserted at end.

Pale brown cloth, gilt, blocked in blind. Brick-red end-papers printed with publishers' advertisements.

No half-titles. Paper boards, half cloth, paper label. White end-papers. Also in dark grey-purple watered cloth, gilt, blocked in blind, with yellow end-papers.

NOTES-- Although dated 1858, this book was actually published in December, 1857.

I have seen a copy of this book in a binding of the grey-purple cloth above mentioned, but with paper labels as employed on the half-cloth edition.

No half-titles. Dark grey-purple cloth, gilt, blocked in blind. Pale green end-papers.

NOTE--This book was published in June, 1858.

No half-titles. Dark grey-purple cloth, gilt, blocked in blind. Pale yellow end-papers.

NOTE--This novel was published in March, 1859.

NOTES-- This book was published in October, 1859.

It is possible that the earliest copies of all contained no publishers' catalogue, but I have been unable to find a copy with a catalogue dated earlier than that mentioned above.

Dark grey-purple cloth, gilt, blocked in blind. Yellow end-papers.

NOTE--This book was published in May, 1860.

NOTE--This book was published in May, 1861. The story appeared serially in the "Cornhill."

NOTE--This book was published in November, 1861.

NOTE--The first volume of this novel was published in book form on December 3, 1861; the second volume on September 25, 1862. Both title-pages are, however, dated 1862.

ORLEY FARM: PART ISSUE.

The following advertisement pages, etc., should be found in a complete set. The advertisements at the front of each number are headed: "Orley Farm Advertiser." All wrappers except front covers are printed with advertisements.

NOTE--This book was published in May, 1862.

NOTE--This book was published in February, 1863.

No half-titles. Maroon cloth, gilt, blocked in blind. Cream end-papers.

NOTE--This book was published in October, 1863.

NOTE--This book was published in March, 1864, and completed its serial run in the "Cornhill" the month following.

NOTE--The first volume of this novel appeared in book form on October 1, 1864, the second volume in August, 1865. The title-pages are dated differently.

CAN YOU FORGIVE HER?: PART ISSUE.

The following advertisement pages, etc., should be found in a complete set. The advertisements at the front of each number are headed "Can you Forgive Her? Advertiser." All wrappers, except front cover, are printed with advertisements.

Maroon cloth, gilt, blocked in blind. Yellow end-papers.

NOTES-- This book was published in March, 1865.

NOTE--This book was published in May, 1865.

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