The fourth of the Chronicles of Barsetshire, Framley Parsonage (1861) is a gentle novel filled with memorable characters, including many characters from The Warden, Barchester Towers, and Doctor Thorne (Barsetshire Novels). Mark Robarts, a young vicar with a devoted wife, has a comfortable situation at Framley Parsonage on the estate of the indomitable Lady Lufton. Her son, now Lord Lufton, had been a friend of Mark Robarts at school, and it was their friendship which resulted in Mark’s position. Mark, though conscientious in his duties and grateful for his situation, is ambitious, however, anxious to expand his horizons beyond Framley. Lady Lufton, who rules with an iron hand, is appalled when Mark decides to spend a weekend with a “fast” crowd, one which he believes can advance his career. Young and naïve, he becomes the dupe of an aristocratic “con-man,” an MP named Nathaniel Sowerby, who persuades him to help him out of a financial jam by signing a note for five hundred pounds (more than half Robarts’s yearly salary), allowing Sowerby to draw funds on Robarts’s name. (To read the full review, click on the title of this excerpt.)
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Posted in 9b-2010 Reviews, England, Literary on Jan 10th, 2011
A witty and incisive look at love, money, and marriage, this 1864 novel is the fifth of Anthony Trollope’s six Barsetshire novels, with some of his best characters. Lily Dale, somewhat reminiscent of Jane Austen’s women, lives with her widowed mother and sister Bell in the Small House on her uncle’s estate. Both girls are of marriageable age, though they have no fortunes, and as the novel develops, the reader sees the extent to which marriage in Victorian England is often a business transaction, negotiated by families to ensure their daughters’ welfare and continuing standard of living. Because Lily and Bell have no fortunes, their courtships become the primary vehicle through which Trollope examines the contrasts between marriages for love and marriages for convenience. When Lily falls hopelessly in love with Adolphus Crosbie, a young friend of her cousin Bernard, he returns her affection. Thinking that her uncle will give her a substantial dowry, Crosbie then proposes, and she accepts. When he discovers there will be no dowry, Crosbie suddenly wonders how he will support Lily in the manner to which he would like to become accustomed. (To read the full review, click on the title.)
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For many years, the kindly and unambitious Rev. Septimus Harding has been warden of Hiram’s Hospital, a residence for poor men who have nowhere else to go, a place where they may live comfortably, get a small stipend from the estate of Mr. Hiram, and live out their lives in peace. The warden of Hiram’s Hospital has also been living at peace, until John Bold, a young reformer, questions why Mr. Harding, as warden, gets eight hundred pounds a year for accepting the title of warden, which does not require him to do much else. In this first of the Barsetshire Chronicles, published in 1855, Trollope establishes the gently satiric tone and mood which pervade the series. Here he focuses on the church, its clergymen, and their roles in society, showing Rev. Harding to be a man of honor and trust (though a bit too comfortable and unimaginative to ask the hard questions) and contrasting him with Archdeacon Grantly, his son-in-law, who enjoys the power and perks of his position and feels that the world owes him whatever what he can get from it. (To see the full review, click on the title.)
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Often considered Trollope’s greatest novel, this satire of British life, written in 1875, leaves no aspect of society unexamined. Through his large cast of characters, who represent many levels of society, Trollope examines the hypocrisies of class, at the same time that he often develops sympathy for these characters who are sometimes caught in crises not of their own making. Filling the novel with realistic details and providing vivid pictures of the various settings in which the characters find themselves, Trollope also creates a series of exceptionally vibrant characters who give life to this long and sometimes cynical portrait of those who move the country. Lady Carbury, her innocent daughter Henrietta (Hetta), and her attractive but irresponsible son Felix are the family around which much of the action rotates. They are always in need of money and Lady Carbury writes pap novels to support the family (and Felix’s drinking and gambling). In contrast to the Carburys, and just as important to the plot, are the Melmottes. Augustus Melmotte, who has come from Vienna under a cloud of financial suspicions, has acquired a huge estate for himself, his foreign wife, and his marriageable daughter. (To see the full review, click on the title.)
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Published in 1945, this novel, which Evelyn Waugh himself sometimes referred to as his “magnum opus,” was originally entitled “Brideshead Revisited: The Sacred and Profane Memories of Captain Charles Ryder.” The subtitle is important, as it casts light on the themes–the sacred grace and love from God, especially as interpreted by the Catholic church, vs. the secular or profane love as seen in sex and romantic relationships. The tension between these two views of love–and the concept of “sin”–underlie all the action which takes place during the twenty years of the novel and its flashbacks. When the novel opens at the end of World War II, Capt. Charles Ryder and his troops, looking for a billet, have just arrived at Brideshead, the now-dilapidated family castle belonging to Lord Marchmain, a place where Charles Ryder stayed for an extended period just after World War I, the home of his best friend from Oxford, Lord Sebastian Flyte. The story of his relationship with Sebastian, a man who has rejected the Catholicism imposed on him by his devout mother, occupies the first part of the book. (To see the full review, click on the title of this excerpt.)
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