Any Trollope fans? (Anthony, not Joanna)

This has prompted me to get the Barchester Towers series DVD box set from that “long river” company.

Oh yes!! Such a treat to dip back into Barchester Chronicles every now & then- so much humour.
I still love the TV series too- Alan Rickman & Geraldine McEwen were perfect at Mrs Proudie & Obidiah Slope! I've got them all on a CD to dip into when I need a pick me up.

I still think Trollope's initial physical description of Obadiah Slope is one of the best (in a yuck sense!) that I've ever read.

He must have had something similar in mind when describing the ghastly Mr Bott, MP - the bete noir (noire?) of Glencora in the first Palliser novel.

Re writing for serialisation, an OU course I once did on the 19th century novel included Far From The Madding Crowd (one of a dozen) and it was very interesting to see how it was first published in monthly serial form - with a real cliffhanger at the end of each instalment, exactly like soaps/serials of today.

In the serial version - a relatively expensive magazine (unlike one of Dickens' magazines, a twopenny weekly) the editor made him remove some of the more shocking bits, as unsuitable or a bad influence on the nicely brought up young ladies who might read it. IIRC the editor was Virginia Woolf's father.

However the 'shocking' bits were considered acceptable for the book version, since the sort of people who could afford to buy books were not likely to have their morals corrupted!

Back from holiday! Hester rambles a bit, and on occasion I was not sure where it was going but the third part is a real cliffhanger. I have re read just that one part several times on its own.

I have just bought a second hand copy of ‘Hester’ - and an looking forward to starting it.

My father was 42 when I was born and only read non-fiction. I taxed him about this. “I used to read a lot of fiction when I was young”, he explained, “ and just don’t need to read any more.” Yet when he was 88 and in his last illness, I sat by his bed talking about the Barchester Chronicals, which I had recently started reading, and Trollope’s characters came back to him as easily as if he had just put down the book. He revelled in the machinations and frustrations of Mrs Proudie and Slope - hardly able to speak for laughing about them. There are books I read a month ago which I have forgotten - but I hope that the real “good stuff” like Trollope will stay with me until the end.

Miss Marjoribanks herself is such a refreshing protagonist. I think it’s interesting to compare her to Emma Woodhouse, another motherless young woman who is prone to interfering and who ‘gets it wrong’ at times - albeit one living a little earlier and from the landed gentry rather than the professional class. I enjoy Miss M’s self-belief - the way she presents herself as a self sacrificing daughter while engaging, successfully, in power struggles with the domestic staff, her father, her rivals in Carlingford. If she had been born later she would be running the country!

MOnica: I completely agree about the little ‘brown’ man who pops up from the West Indies and is the rightful heir. It’s so surprising that his mixed race is not presented as a barrier - rather his age and unfamiliarity with the some local conventions. I was also surprised by the sympathetic presentation of the working class radical. The entanglement of the radical’s daughter with the (assumes) son and heir was interesting - the daughter despising her saintly father’s principles and yearning for the life of privilege rang very true!

Another Trollope lover. What I find a fascinating element is the appearance of characters from one series to another. But I also like Thackeray and Gaskell. Dickens (especially his female characters) varies just so much.

Wilkie Collins anyone?

I'm sure someone's done a thesis on the impact of writing for serialisation eg magazines - which women didn't tend to do IMHO.

How wonderful, so many Grans who love the same things that I do. I periodically reread one of my ancient copies of Anthony Trollope's books.

One of my favourite roles in the Barchester Chronicles series was Geraldine McEwen as the Bishop's wife, Mrs Proudie. Her absolutely terrifying delivery of the phrase "The Bishop is of the opinion and I agree with him...." was just perfect. And so, of course, was Alan Rickman's portrayal of the oily, scheming Obadiah Slope.

I have the Barchester Chronicles and The Pallisers on DVD to watch on rainy days - if we ever have rain again in southern Australia.

When I got my first Kindle I got all the Barchester and Palliser novels and indulged myself all summer. I loved the BBC adaptation of the Chronicles in the early 1980s and it's Alan Rickman's oily Slope that has remained in my memory. We lost a great actor when he died.

Fossil I have read 'He will not when he may' I found one of the most interesting things about it , is that 'He' is of mixed race and, beyond him being described 'a little brown man', no one takes any notice of him being mixed race, he is accepted into Society, in the family, the county and in London seemingly without comment and when he proposes marriage, it is age difference not colour that leads someone who cares for him, but not enough ot turn him down.

The other two I love are 'Hester', one of her longer books that deals with a woman running a family bank, and 'Eleanor's Marriage' - which definitely is not Trollopean!

I am away now for a week, on holiday in a location without wifi, so any further posts will be in a weeks time.

M0nica: Yes! At last, anotherfan! I sing her praises to my friends - including a fellow Trollope devotee - but so far do not seem to have tempted them to try her. Perhaps her name puts people off? ‘Mrs’, I mean. Might come across as a stodgy, worthy bore - when she’s so witty, perceptive etc. I came across Mrs Oliphant via an excellent BBC radio adaptation of Miss Marjoribanks on IPlayer a couple of years back and have been reading her whenever I get a chance - the Carlingford series are such a delight. Most recently I read ‘He that will not when he may’ which was surprisingly different in tone, more political - radical - than I’d expected, and also satisfying. I wish more of her books were in print.

If anybody does read any of the Carlingford novels I would love to hear your opinions, even if you hate them. If tyou liked them on thread so that I can recruit more readers, or by PM.

Meanwhile I a rereading Trollope's The Belton Estate

Thanks from me, too, for the Carlingford recommendation. Another Trollope fan here. The style is so satisfying, and he does have some feisty heroines - think Lily Dale. Orley Farm is perhaps my favourite of the non Barchester and Palliser ones, and of the latter The Duke’s Children I think.

EthelJ, I have got all of her Carlingford novels on my Kindle. You can read them in any order as each is stand alone.

I think the best are: The Doctor's Family, Miss Marjoribanks, the heroine of this novel is laughable monstrous in her complete self-satisfaction with herself, and Phoebe Junior, another really feisty heroine. The Rector is short, a little conventional, but perfectly formed.

The last 2, Salem Chapel and The Perpetual Curate, I find harder going, especially Salem Chapel

She was a prolific writer, over 100 novels, and I am now starting to read some of the others. Some are superb, others read like pot boilers.

m0nica I've never read any Mrs Olliphant but it sounds like something I would enjoy I will do a search on Kindle to see if there are any. Are there any in particular you recommend?

Associated with Trollope has anyone read any novels by Mrs Oliphant? She wrote the Carlingford novels (among others)

She is a contemporary of Trollope but writes slightly down the social scale from him, about small town life and the interface between CofE and the Dissenters, mainly trades people. Her books are more 'human' and the women are more feisty.

I enjoyed the tv adaptations

Perhaps I should try re-reading the books from the view of enjoyment rather than having to analyse them for exams …..

It's many years since I have read any Trollope but I did enjoy them I think I've read most of the Palliser and Barchester novels and remember getting completely engrossed in the characters. I loved that on the whole the characters and plots were very well developed. I am looking for something to read when I finish my current book. I think I will reread some Trollope!

My favourite was Nigel Hawthorne as Archdeacon Grantly. Nigel Hawthorne was such a brilliant actor and his face was unrecognisable form part to part.

The Pallisers is very good, with Susan Hampshire as Lady Glencora and that wonderful handsome and charming Irish MP Phineas Finn, not a womaniser, but a man who is foolish about women, always utterly in love with one lady or another and unable to bring any relationship to a close, except his Irish sweetheart, who dies in childbirth and much later Madame Max Goessler

The wonderfully unctuous Obadiah Slope ... or was it Slop?

I think Trollope has been very fortunate that almost all the dramatisations of his books have been good. Even Andrew Davis's couldn't ruin 'He knew he was right' which is really very good.

As for Alan Rickman and Nigel Hawthorne in Barchester Chronicles........ I also have the The Pallisers, all 20 plus episodes. It was meant to be a serial to ride on the success of the Forsyte Saga, but there was a long tv strike and it never took off because it was broadcast so irregulalry.

Did anyone see the BBC version of The Way We Live Now?
If I've loved the book, I'm usually wary of screen adaptations - so often they're very disappointing, but I have to say it was very well done. David Suchet was IMO brilliant as the swindler Melmotte, and Shirley Henderson equally brilliant as his daughter.
Some of the sub plots were left out, as the book is very long, but they were expendable. IMO it was a class act from the Beeb.

Absolutely love them, both Pallisers and Barchester series,

Then there are other individual novels like The Belton Estate A wonderful study of young woman of status left without means and the 2 men who are both willing to marry her, or provide the means for her to live independently, so, as she sees it no matter what choice she makes, she is dependent on a man.

Also He knew he was right a novel about a man who convinces himself that his wife has been unfaithful with her god father, because there has been, from childhood, a close and loving relationship between them, it turns into an obsession and then a mania and the targedy that ensues.

I agree ^The Way we live now' The portrayal of Lady Carbury pouring everything, her money, her life, her daughter's future into her wastrel son, convinced that he cannot be other than admirable 'because he is so handsome' is a horrifying portrayal of a doting mother

I have just downloaded his complete works onto my kindle. Have only just started reading/rereading them,