From a review of the Anthony Trollope canon in The Economist (2020/04/08 edition): *“The Way We Live Now” (1875) is as much a portrait of the last few decades as it is of the high Victorian age, and every bit as addictive as HBO’s hit series “Succession”. The novel’s anti-hero, Augustus Melmotte, is one of the great portraits of the businessman as ogre—a “horrid, big, rich scoundrel”, “a bloated swindler” and “vile city ruffian” who bears an uncanny resemblance to the late Robert Maxwell (and to living figures who had best not be named for legal reasons). Despite his foreign birth and mysterious past, Melmotte forces his way into British society by playing on the greed of bigwigs who despise him yet compete for his favours. He buys his way into the House of Commons; he floats a railway company that is ostensibly designed to build a line between Mexico and America but is really a paper scheme for selling shares. The Ponzi scam eventually collapses, exposing Britain’s great commercial empire for a greed-fuelled racket and its high society as a hypocritical sham. “The Way We Live Now” is an excellent place to begin an affair with Trollope. It is relatively short by his standards and exquisitely executed. If you don’t like it, Trollope’s world is not for you. If you do, another 46 novels await you.*
Setting / LocationLondon & UK
Story Era1800s / Victorian
Protagonist / CoreThe way we live now Lead Character
The Great Field lies in the bend of a broad, meandering river. Bounded on three sides by water, on the fourth side it dwindles gradually into wilderness. A handful of tents are scattered far and wide across its immensity. Their flags flutter in the warm breeze, rich with the promise of halcyon days. But more and more people are setting up camp in the lush pastures, and with each new arrival, life becomes a little more complicated. And when a large and disciplined group arrives from across the river, emotions run so high that even a surplus of milk pudding can't soothe ruffled feathers. Change is coming; change that threatens the delicate balance of power in the Great Field. Magnus Mills's new novel takes its name from the site of a 1520 meeting between Henry VIII and Francis I of France, to improve relations between the countries as the Treaty of London deteriorated. It allegorically suggests a number of historical encounters on British soil: the coming of the Vikings, the coming of the Romans. But The Field of the Cloth of Gold sits firmly outside of time, a skillful and surreal fable dealing with ideas of ownership, empire, immigration, charisma, diplomacy, and bureaucracy.
Publisher Description (unedited publisher data) In this volume of interdisciplinary essays, leading scholars examine the radical tradition in British literary culture from the English Revolution to the French Revolution. They chart continuities between the two periods and examine the recuperation of ideas and texts from the earlier period in the 1790s and beyond. Contributors utilize a variety of approaches and concepts: from gender studies, the cultural history of food and diet and the history of political discourse, to explorations of the theatre, philosophy and metaphysics. This volume argues that the radical agendas of the mid-seventeenth century, intended to change society fundamentally, did not disappear throughout the long eighteenth-century only to be resuscitated at its close. Rather, through close textual analysis, these essays indicate a more continuous transmission. Library of Congress subject headings for this publication: English literature 18th century History and criticism, Radicalism in literature, English literature Early modern, 1500-1700 History and criticism, English literature 19th century History and criticism, Revolutionary literature, English History and criticism, Politics and literature Great Britain History, Radicalism Great Britain History.
"Outspoken Women: An anthology of women's writing on sex, 1870-1969 brings together the non-fictional writings of British women on sexual attitudes and behaviour nearly a hundred years prior to 'second-wave' feminism. Studying the period from the supposedly prudish Victorian era, to the sexual revolution of the 1960s, this comprehensive study reveals a neglected tradition of British women's writing." "The excerpts analysed here come from polemics, works of advice, surveys, essays and belles lettres, and the authors, including famous and lesser-known figures, provide a diverse range of perspectives, and include social Darwinists, sexologists, psychoanalysts, VD campaigners, as well as women writing about their own lives and experiences." "Hall's remarkable book is an engaging examination of this fascinating subject and provides students and scholars with an invaluable source of primary material."--Jacket.
"Macaulay's History of England stands as a classic more than a century after its completion; his parliamentary speeches and his collected Essays inspired generations of British statesmen; English and American schoolboys by the millions memorized and recited his Lays of Ancient Rome. What were the forces--familial, intellectual, circumstantial, and psychological--that shaped the life and mind of the great English historian and orator whose name became a household word on both sides of the Atlantic? In this book, based in large part on manuscript sources hitherto never fully exploited, historian John Clive shows us Macaulay the child, the youth, and the burgeoning historian and statesman--against the background of pre-Victorian England, in which he made his intellectual and political debut.^ With sympathy and skill, the varied threads of Macaulay's formative years are brought to light: his moralistic, Evangelical upbringing in the pietistic atmosphere of the Clapham Sect; his relationship with his stern, dominating father, his gentle, protective mother, and his two youngest sisters, Margaret and Hannah, who alone were to respond to his immense need for warmth and affection; his youthful oratorical and literary successes; his early preoccupation with history as the advance of civilization; his dual role as actor and spectator in the great events of the first Reform Bill battle, as well as in Whig society in London; and, finally, his years as a legal and educational reformer in India. Here is the private man: ungainly, undistinguished-looking, given to self-dramatization and fantasy and torrents of talk; enjoying his role as a social lion, but becoming disillusioned and dissatisfied with his role in politics.^ Determined to be his own man, he had no sooner achieved financial and political security--in a lucrative post on the Governor-General's Council in India--than the relationship with his beloved sisters so necessary to his emotional security was destroyed. Here is the public Macaulay: cocksure and impetuous, a parvenu lacking the specific gravity of a statesman, and yet speaking out not only for freedom as an abstraction, but concretely for the rights of Jews, Roman Catholics and blacks; envisioning a potential beauty and splendor in industrialization; almost singlehandedly writing a penal code for India; becoming embroiled in the crucial controversy over Indian education (what should be taught and in what language); and forever leaving his mark on Anglo-Indian cultural relations--just as India left its mark on him.^ And, finally, here is the Macaulay who returned at the age of 38 to a London in the grip of the impending coronation of Queen Victoria--with the idea of the History of England firmly in his mind. From Clapham, to Cambridge, to the House of Commons, to Calcutta, and back to England, Macaulay is seen not only as a man of extraordinary intellect and vision finding himself but as the product of a family, a class, a time, and a place. The man and his works are made immediate and are fully understood in this superb, full-scale portrait."--Dust jacket.
The way we live now by Anthony Trollope | Literally Just Books
