Anthony Trollope, Bullhampton, Clerks, etc.

I have read the Vicar of Bullhampton, Three Clerks, He Knew He Was Right, Richmond Castle, Dr. Wortle's School, An Old Man's Love, The Struggles of Brown, Jones and Robinson, and Sir Harry Hotspur of Humblethwaite. The Vicar of Bullhampton is a pathetic story, with the fallen woman returning to the berth of her family after walking a long distance, displaying 'an appetite not quite in keeping with the romance of her situation." I enjoyed that flash of wit, but the story is lengthily sad. I laughed only at the introduction of the reverend Mr. Outhouse and his wife. Three Clerks is a satire of the post office, thinly disguised as the Weights and Measures office, and anyone who knows bureaucracy will laugh at the conscientious worker Fidus Neverbend, and all the competing for jobs. It's right up there with Cold Comfort Farm. He Knew He Was Right is a conventional melodrama, although long at 950+ pages. Richmond Castle is the same, save that it is set in the Irish famine, and has little asides deploring the scandalous inaction of the government. Read Blanche Fitzgerald's history of the famine instead of this, it's riveting. (She has a double-barreled pseudonym, which I now forget.) Dr. Wortle's School also is a satire, with a clergyman discovering his wife's previous husband, supposedly dead, is still living, and all the scandal that brings. An Old Man's Love is elegiac, as you might expect from Trollope's last novel, and the elderly (he's 50!) hero loses the girl in self-sacrifice. Sigh. The Struggles of Brown, Jones and Robinson is another attempt at satire, which doesn't work, and Sir Harry Hotspur of Humblethwaite is another melodrama, albeit a short one.

Trollope, four books in a day

I foolishly decided to read the rest of Trollope because I had read the Barchester stuff and the political novels. Unfortunately, I failed to notice he had written 49 books in his life. So I've got over 20 of them on my nighttable, borrowed from other libraries. I plowed in yesterday. First, I have to mention that I started the Vicar of Bullhampton, and I am already convinced it is a masterpiece of portraiture, especially after reading the description of the miller. I also read some of Trollope's later works: The Golden Lion of Granpere, The Fixed Period, Mr. Scarborough's Family, and Harry Heathcote of Gangoil. Scarborough and Granpere are conventional Trollope pieces of misplaced love and money troubles, although Granpere is set in France. Frankly, I hardly noticed the change of setting and I didn't find the portraiture of rural XIXth century France convincing at all. Fixed Period is a satirical novel about statisticians who plan everything in principle, but I did not find the satire very biting. Gangoil is another late novel set in Australia, and I didn't find that setting convincing either. It would appear that the critics were right: Trollope moved away from his strengths as a novelist when he moved away from his usual type of novel, although I can hardly blame him for doing so.