Books

One hundred and fifty years ago today, Queen Victoria and her subjects were plunged into mourning following the untimely demise of the Prince Consort. Albert’s death threw an enormous wet blanket over the social season, with the cancellation of balls, concerts, and soirees. For appearances’ sake, Charles Dickens was obliged to postpone a lucrative series of public readings, which must have really smarted. Those of more modest means that the Inimitable Boz wondered how on earth they would afford to put their families in mourning. Manufacturers, meanwhile, rubbed their hands with glee, greedily anticipating a boost to their profits as the trade in commemorative items and dark-coloured clothing boomed. It’s an ill wind. ...

My reading resolution for 2011 is to finish reading all of Trollope’s 47 novels. The short stories and non-fiction will have to wait ’til next year. Here’s the current tally: Can You Forgive Her? Phineas Finn The Eustace Diamonds Phineas Redux He Knew He Was Right The Way We Live Now Lady Anna Is He Popenjoy? Rachel Ray Linda Tressel Cousin Henry The Vicar of Bullhampton Kept in the Dark Miss Mackenzie The Belton Estate The Claverings The American Senator John Caldigate The Prime Minister The Duke’s Children Ayala’s Angel The Fixed Period Dr Wortle’s School An Old Man’s Love The Warden Barchester Towers Doctor Thorne An Eye for an Eye Framley Parsonage The Small House at Allington The Last Chronicle of Barset Marion Fay Mr Scarborough’s Family Nina Balatka Sir Harry Hotspur of Humblethwaite Harry Heathcote of Gangoil The Struggles of Brown, Jones and Robinson The Golden Lion of Granpère The Macdermots of Ballycloran Ralph the Heir The Three Clerks Orley Farm The Bertrams La Vendée The Kelly’s and the O’Kellys (nearly there!) Castle Richmond (one to go!) The Landleaguers (done it!) 🎉 You can discover my favourites and those I’d happily never read again. ...

A Mummer’s Wife (1885) was my first introduction to George Moore, and I found myself captivated by this intriguing literary figure, who attracted praise and censure in equal measure. W B Yeats found the novel so shocking that he forbade his sister to read it, and the conservative press was almost unanimous in condemning its “coarseness”. Moore’s novel tells the story of Kate Ede, a bored Midlands housewife unhappily married to an asthmatic draper. When Dick Lennox, a handsome travelling actor, comes to lodge with her family, Kate succumbs to temptation, with disastrous consequences. Moore describes in almost unbearable detail Kate’s sense of claustrophobia, disillusionment, and subsequent ignominious descent into alcoholism. 124 years after it was first published, A Mummer’s Wife retains its ability to shock. ...

Most people don’t like change, and Trollope readers really hate it. Nina Balatka (1867) was an attempt to try something different, and Trollope published it anonymously in order to mark the departure from his familiar style. Reviewers quickly saw through his disguise, and the reading public were unimpressed. The original serialisation in Blackwood’s Magazine flopped, and the three-decker sold fewer than 500 copies. Consequently, the novel is one of Trollope’s least-known works. A terrible shame, say I, as Nina Balatka is one of his finest short novels. ...

Imagine, if you will, settling down to watch what promises to be a really good film, and then suddenly and inexplicably, it is interrupted by a party political broadcast from the Tory party. That’s how I felt about Mr Scarborough’s Family (1883), Trollope’s 45th and antepenultimate novel. The story begins well, with a King Lear moment in which the eponymous Mr Scarborough tries to decide which of his unworthy sons should inherit his considerable wealth. What follows is endless depictions of nasty, selfish people, with whom one is inclined to feel little sympathy. ...

As you probably know, Black Beauty (1877) is the autobiography of a rather handsome horse, admirably translated from the equine by Anna Sewell. Less well-known is the fact that Sewell earned just £40 for the copyright of the phenomenally successful novel. It sold 100,000 copies in her own short lifetime, and has no doubt sold millions more since then. Sadly, she didn’t live long enough to cash in on her name. However, I think she’d be pleased if her tale resulted in even one horse receiving better treatment. ...

I can’t help but suspect that Marion Fay (1882) is a literary bubble and squeak. Trollope seems to have taken some leftover plots and put them together, seasoning them with a dash of sensation. He did have a habit of popping half-written manuscripts in a drawer, secure in the knowledge that they could in future bring him some much-needed income. The novel was published not long before he died, so perhaps we can forgive him for going slightly off the boil. ...

Bigamy, bisexuality, and betrayal form the sensational plot of Demos (1886), the third published novel from super-grump George Gissing. Although the novel’s sub-title – ‘A Story of English Socialism’ – doesn’t make it sound terribly exciting, politics and social unrest form the backdrop, and the foreground narrative is both tight and compelling. George Orwell, perhaps anticipating Twitter, pithily described Demos as “a story of the moral and intellectual corruption of a working-class Socialist who inherits a fortune.” The Socialist in question is Dick Mutimer, a serious-minded mechanic who leaves behind his old life and in a slum district of London without the least compunction. Meanwhile, the presumed heir to the fortune, aesthete Hubert Eldon, returns from the Continent with a mysterious bullet wound and discovers that his comfortable position has been usurped by a rough young parvenu. Mutimer uses his new-found wealth to establish an ironworks and model village in the fictional Midlands town of Wanley, and is able to realise his long-held dream of improving the lot of Demos – the working man. ...

A paradoxical disadvantage of the Kindle’s long battery life is that I often forget to charge it before train journeys and find myself facing a blank screen. The last such episode proved felicitous, as it prompted me to buy Madame Tussaud and the History of Waxworks from the wonderful £2 bookshop opposite the British Library. Although I visited Madame Tussaud’s several times as a tiny geek, I hadn’t given it much thought since, but Pamela Pilbeam’s superb study has awakened my interest. The book is part biography of Tussaud herself, and part cultural history of waxworks. ...

WARNING: this review is positively teeming with plot spoilers. Drat my impatience. I was trying to save The Last Chronicle of Barset (1867) for a forthcoming holiday, but the temptation was too great. As the title suggests, the novel is the final chronicle in Trollope’s tales of Barsetshire, so there is a certain poignancy that such memorable characters have now been put to rest. For many devotees, this novel is their favourite in the Trollopian Canon, and it’s easy to see why. The formidable cast from the previous chronicles is assembled and it’s like meeting old friends and finding out what they’ve been doing since you last saw them. As the reader is already familiar with the trials and tribulations of Barsetshire folk, there aren’t endless new names to remember and opinions to be formed (opinion-forming it deceptively fatiguing). Although there are sensational elements, Trollope delivers them in a languid fashion, relying on gradual enlightenment, rather than narrative shocks. Nathaniel Hawthorne, I think, encapsulated the essence of Trollope when he wrote that his writing is “as real as if some giant had hewn a great lump out of the earth and put it under a glass case, with all its inhabitants going about their daily business, and not suspecting that they were being made a show of.” ...