Anthony Trollope wrote The Way We Live Now to study what he termed “the commercial profligacy of the age,” and he succeeded in publishing the most savage attack on human nature since William Makepeace Thackeray’s Vanity Fair (1848). He viewed… Read More ›
Frances Trollope wrote many novels, but most critics agree The Vicar of Wrexhill is her best. Framed in her normally intrusive, authorial didactic voice, the novel focuses on corruption in the Church of England. Her combined themes of religious and… Read More ›
William Makepeace Thackeray issued in 24 installments what would become his most popular novel, first published between October 1853 and August 1855. In The Newcomes, Thackeray offered an uncomplimentary view of Victorian ideas of respectable marriages; hence, the meaningful subtitle… Read More ›
Anthony Trollope produced the best-selling novel of its time in this, the third book in his Barsetshire sequence, Doctor Thorne, published in three volumes. He departed from his normal village setting in this novel to consider county characters, focusing on… Read More ›
In his novel David Copperfield, Charles Dickens produced his own favorite work and the favorite of many of his readers. He had honed his style through previous novels, and David Copperfield reflects his mature skill, partially accounting for the novel’s… Read More ›
William Hale White first fictionalized his attempts to escape his childhood’s Calvinistic training by writing an autobiography under the name of Mark Rutherford. He later used his own name when he published another serious exploration of the conflict caused by… Read More ›
Serialized between January 1864 and August 1865, Anthony Trollope’s first in his Palliser series, Can You Forgive Her? proved instantly popular. Based on reworked material from his failed comedy The Noble Jilt, its plot focuses on Victorian discontent with social… Read More ›
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