*Yay, Trollope!* 👏🏻 Add me to the list of people who have completely fallen in ❤️ with this author, thanks to you! That little _Bean_ is just SO precious!
Re: Trollope vs Dickens, I hesitate to wade in here because you're much more well read than I am (I've read three Trollope and eight Dickens novels), but I'd say that, based on what I've read, Dickens is notable for really caring about dramatizing the lives of the poor classes. Even in a book like Oliver Twist, which I don't care for much, the early parts where he's railing against the type of orphanage that Oliver is in are legitimately powerful. Also, as silly and trivial as it sounds to say it...Dickens is much better at naming characters. Trollope has some good ones, but it's like his very very best (the Obadiah Slopes) are at a level that Dickens can just throw out on a production line without seemingly even trying, and a bunch of Trollope characters just have some frankly rather dumb and obvious jokes. In a lot of other ways I agree with you about rating Trollope higher on humor (much as I think Dickens has many really great passages, I do think Barchester Towers is all around a funnier novel than afaik Dickens ever wrote), but Dickens has those names, indicative of, imo, this absolutely extraordinary instinctive command of language that I do think surpasses Trollope (along with most other English-language novelists), however much he might be rightfully criticized in other facets of novel writing.
I've just finished The Warden by Anthony Trollope and unlike the hype I've heard, I loved it. I am moving straight on to Barchester Towers. If everyone is correct and Trollope gets better, then I am in for a treat!
I've just started "The Warden" after watching a terrific seven-part series called "The Barchester Chronicles." I highly recommend it; you can find the whole thing on You Tube. The entire cast is first-rate, but Donald Pleasence (Mr Harding), Geraldine McEwan (Mrs Proudie), and Alan Rickman at his most unctuous (Obadaiah Slope) stand out. Happy reading (and hopefully viewing)!
Just read The Way we live Now. You are right about minor characters in his books. To me, there are no minor characters. This was my first Trollop and it won't be my last. Its fun to go back go to pandemic times and watch your video.
I have a collection of Penguin Classics . The older ones were not printed on non-acid free paper so they are becoming yellow and brittle . Should I just give them away or trade them in, so some person(s) can get 1 or 2 last reads out of them.
I am doing a long overdue sort out of my books Which are mostly in boxes and crates I have discovered so many duplicates Some are deliberate like some books I always want to have in my collection But also want to lend / give to folks. I need to make a toy database of all my books Using a graphic database to track everything.
Ok Steve You got me. I want to start collecting Penguin Classics and have a few questions. I have been a collector for years, mainly modern first editions and limited editions. What should I start with? Are yours all first edition thus copies, does that matter to you? Are the black spines better than the earlier color coded ones??? Please educate me!!! Paul
I was a relative latecomer to Trollope. I worked my way through the Barchester novels and I've just read Can You Forgive Her?. I have the next two Palliser books lined up. Unlike you, I prefer the earlier Penguin Classics with the red bar on top of the spine, but I tend to buy these catch as catch can and I have a total mismatch of covers with some orange spines and even a TV tie-in Penguin for Barchester Towers with Nigel Hawthorne and Donald Pleasance on the cover. In the 90s Penguin seems to have published all of Trollopes novels in orange paperbacks with each one numbered on the spine according to the order of publication. Super annoying if you like to group your books by series, like me. The only one of these I have is no. 7, Doctor Thorne.
On reflection I realise I have not read Barchester Towers. Not sure why not but yet another one to add to my list. Is it because we got lazy back in the day because the BBC did them so well?
I adore Anthony Trollope and agree with you that he is better (in psychological realism at least) than Dickens. He’s probably even better (dare I say it!) than George Eliot. I think he knowingly set himself against Dickens - there are a couple of barbs aimed at Dickens in The Warden and (I hope I remember correctly) Doctor Thorne. Dickens is an expressionist, not a realist. Dickens succeeds at political agitation, where Trollope has difficulties. I’m reading Castle Richmond at the moment & his reading of the Irish famine is cringeworthy, even if he is the only major Victorian novelist even to address this major humanitarian disaster.
I'm anxious to hear because then I can plan out my other July books. I just got my unabridged Life of Johnson in the mail. I plan on starting that soon, not sure I can keep up with the reading schedule but I'm determined to give it a go. Then there is the July chunkster? I'm working on a novel by Jean Plaidy told in first person about Eleanor of Aquitaine. I'm reading through her entire catalog. I've read the entire Georgian series and loved it. I find her very comforting.
