According to P D Edward’s introduction, Trollope sent a copy of Rachel Ray to George Eliot, wondering what she would think of his “little story”. History does not tell us her response, but I suspect she would have enjoyed it, as it is not unlike her own Scenes of Clerical Life. He tried to confine himself to the “commonest details of commonplace life” but this anything but a dull novel. ...
Cousin Henry (1880) is something of a rarity amongst Trollope’s novels in that it’s fairly short. Despite its brevity, it manages to include one of the most interesting character studies I’ve encountered in Victorian fiction. Henry Jones inherits his uncle’s estates and conceals the knowledge that another will had been made, this time leaving them to his cousin Isabel Brodrick. His guilty conscience means that he is unable to enjoy his new-found wealth and he becomes increasingly bitter and reclusive. The presence of the legal will torments him, but his weakness of character prevents him from destroying it. ...