The Trollope novels

As my Folio 60 is still somewhere in the mail and I cannot check...

How many of the Trollope novels had been published by Folio?

All 47 of them, in a joint enterprise with the Trollope Society.

There went my plans for less books in the next months.

Thanks boldface :)

I have been ordering the Trollope novels published by Folio wherever I can find them for the last several weeks. I'm amazed that so many of them are difficult to find in hard cover elsewhere. Personally, I prefer Trollope to Dickens as regular fare.

I love Dickens... but I like Trollope also. :) So now getting both in nice editions. Having all in Folio editions makes it easy enough I guess (even if some of them are not that easy to be found).

>4 toodlessm: "I'm amazed that so many of them are difficult to find in hard cover elsewhere."

Although many of Trollope's novels have been issued in hard cover over the years, the Folio/Trollope Society edition is the very first UNIFORM edition of his complete novels to be published. Contrast that with Dickens, where several uniform editions came out during his lifetime and have continued to be published fairly regularly since.

I prefer Trollope to Dickens as well. And yes, it is hard sometimes to find the Folio editions (at least on my side of the pond.)

What I have discovered (in the U.S.) is that while Trollope's Barchester and Palliser series, as well as a few other novels such as The Way We Live Now, are easy to acquire in hard cover, his lesser known works are harder to find. In my book group, for example, we have not been able to discuss his less popular books because members have been unable to check them out through the public library system. The local bookstores also do not carry many quality hard cover volumes by Trollope. Maybe this is just a local phenomenon.

I have found all of Dickens works to be readily obtainable.

Frankly, I think Trollope is ripe for a renewal of interest on the part of readers who like solid, traditional storytelling--and ripe for Folio's republication of the complete works.

Just another American sounding off in favor of Trollope over Dickens.

It might have something to do with the education - I heard of Trollope when a teacher mentioned it in passing while Dickens was part of my English classes - even though I had special English Literature classes that covered a lot of British and American authors, Trollope was just not there. From what I had seen in different countries in the region, that's the usual way. And I think there is only one book translated into Bulgarian and it happened fairly recently.

I guess that if you are in a US/UK college with a major in Literature you will hear about him but other from this...

I love Trollope but Dickens is still my favourite. They have very different styles - Dickens emphasising the grotesque while Trollope was more of a realist when it came to understanding how money, power and birth interacted. The Way We Live Now in particular is a towering achievment, comparable to Bleak House in my view.

I have been collecting Trollope in the old hardback pocket classics issued by Oxford University Press in the World's Classics series. Trollope was published in the UK in this format up to the mid 70's. I love the pocket size, thin paper and clear type of these volumes. Also, OUP championed Trollope, keeping all of his ouvre in print, when many other publishers neglected him.

Trollope's greatest mistake was confessing in his autobiography that he had very workmanlike writing habits, writing a certain number of pages every day. This led to many critics denigrating his work, believing that genius could never work to a schedule. Flaubert took a similar approach and was never denigrated in this way.

Interesting to know about Trollope's writing habits! I have to confess that I've never read a single work of his - any suggestions as to where I should start?

> 13

I think start with The Warden. It's short and you will get a feel as to whether or not you like Trollope's style. If you do, go to Barchester Towers which is quite funny and the second Barchester novel.

If you are then tired of reading about clergymen, switch to the Palliser novels, starting with Can You Forgive Her? These novels are about high politics in the 19th century. But as I said, Trollope's masterpice is The Way We Live Now, which is self contained, belonging to no series.

"I guess that if you are in a US/UK college with a major in Literature you will hear about him"

I wouldn't be too sure about that, AnnieMod; I was an English Literature major and never, in the course of getting a B.A. and an M.A. degree, was assigned to read a novel by Trollope! A surfeit of Dickens, Conrad and George Eliot, more Hardy and Thackeray than appealed to my taste, even novels by relatively obscure Victorian authors such as George Gissing--but not one Trollope, even Barchester Towers. In addition to the reasons cited by Quicksilver66 for this neglect must be added the fact that Trollope was very popular with a broad general audience, and academe tends to have a snobbish attitude about such things. I think this is why my courses also never included Dracula, the novels of Wilkie Collins, and only Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde by Stevenson.

>15 Django6924:

That's why I said "I guess" :)

Now that's strange. It's not like he is some obscure author. Collins, Stevenson and Stoker were at least mentioned - not as texts but in the history of English literature parts. Not a word for Trollope. Oh well - good that I somehow found it (long live the library donations - my school's English language library was a donation from some US libraries (ex-peace corp person organized something when they went home... or something like this). The newest book was published in 1975 I suppose but they were in English and they were there) :)

>15 Django6924: "Trollope was very popular with a broad general audience, and academe tends to have a snobbish attitude about such things."

I would agree that there is a certain snobbish or at least ambivalent attitude in academic circles to popular authors, but surely Dickens is the great exemplar of a truly popular author with a broad general audience and one who has hardly been neglected by academe.

In Trollope's case, as Quicksilver says, critics were appalled by his business-like attitude to writing and the fact that his novels sometimes appeared at the alarming rate of more than one a year. Trollope himself acknowledged that he occasionally kept one in a drawer for months in order not to flood the market too often. Even so, he was very successful in his day - so successful that he began to suffer from that paranoia which can afflict popular authors: Do the public buy my novels because I'm a great writer or because my name is famous? To test the water he published a couple of novels anonymously, Nina Balatka and Linda Tressel, with stories as far removed from Barsetshire as possible. 'Nina Balatka' was set in Prague and Linda Tressel in Nuremberg, cities he'd recently, but alas all too briefly, visited. To his horror, the public were unimpressed, although a few critics, such as Henry James, saw through his disguise.

With 47 novels to his credit (more than three times the number Dickens wrote) it's not surprising that many have fallen into obscurity, although the great Palliser and Barchester novels have never been out of print. Many of the lesser-known ones, however, are well worth reading. My wife has recently enjoyed reading Miss Mackenzie and one of my favourites is Dr Wortle's School - both short, by the way.

> 17

I am not so sure about Dickens academic reception - it was not that long ago that he was neglected by academics, although his place is now secure. When Orwell championed him in his great essay, Dickens was still regarded as a popular rather than a serious novelist. He was denigrated by FR Leavis in The Great Tradition due to his apparent lack of moral seriousness. Leavis dismissed Dickens as an entertainer. For Leavis the great English novelists were those with a commanding moral voice - Austen, Conrad, James and George Elliot. However, Leavis subsequently recanted. Dickens place on the curriculum is relatively recent.

Leavis neglected Trollope as well - even though Trollope had something of that moral voice which Leavis valued.

One contemporary critic - either Harold Bloom or George Steiner - said that this inability on the part of Leavis to appreciate Dickens said more about the limitations of Leavis than Dickens. What a wonderful retort!

As well as the complete set of 47 novels issued in uniform bindings mentioned above, the Society published an earlier edition of the six Barsetshire novels between 1976 and 1980.

> 18

Yes, you are right about Dickens being best appreciated more recently. Leavis's The Great Tradition was indeed influential on knocking Dickens's standing. Then, in the 1950s, John Butt and Kathleen Tillotson inspired a whole generation of academics with Dickens at Work. From this sprang the Clarendon edition (still ongoing) of the novels and the great Pilgrim Edition of the Letters.

Focusing on the FS Trollopes: I have the Pallisers, Barchesters plus a couple of others, but whilst I like the internals and the spines, the covers themselves I dislike: pale coloured papers that mark at the drop of a hat. I have found them almost impossible to keep in pristine state when reading them, as they pick up marks of any sort incredibly easily. Need to wear them wearing cotton or similar gloves!

I think the Brontes were reissued in more resilient covers. If FS ever considered doing the Trollopes again, that would be prerequisite for me.

> 21

I have the Trollope Society versions.
Pros: same setting/typeface as the FS, brown buckram binding (not so vulnerable to marks).
Cons: they don't have the Folio illustrations.
The Trollope Society edition also includes in matching (but blue) bindings, eight of his non-fiction books, such as North America, Australia and New Zealand, West Indies and the Spanish Main, etc.

Do you mean the later buckram bindings of Jane Eyre and Wuthering Heights or the earlier silk bindings which, while being physically robust, have faded over time? My problem with the Bronte set, as with the Fielding set, is the smallish 10pt type which makes for a very dense page. The Trollope is 12pt and much more pleasant to read.

I have always felt a big part of Dickens acceptance by current academics is down to the frequent inclusion of the Victorian working class in his writings.

Current academia seems far more interested in the "lower" levels of society than the "upper". By peeling back the covers, Dickens is afforded respect.

I'd suggest that Trollope is relatively neglected academically because he was, for all his merits, less influential a writer. In so far as the study of literature is the study of literary history, Trollope, as a dead-end, would naturally figure less.

There is a complete set of the Folio Trollope available at Kay Craddock Antiquarian Booksellers in Australia for AUD2000. (It includes a novella and, I think, autobiography for a total of 49 books.)

I wander down to the shop occasionally and have seen this set. All the volumes lined up in the bookcase does make for an impressive sight.

I bought an almost complete set for $400!

(Sorry, I couldn't resist a little boasting. I had been looking for a well-priced set for ages.)

#25 - I also have seen that set at Kay Craddock. Looks fantastic, and I was sorely tempted...

I've managed to collect the entire 48-volume FS Trollope set. I purchased most of them directly from Folio (many at half-price) and to complete the set, I obtained the remaining 5 or 6 through Abebooks.

Here is a scan of the cover page of the Society's brochure for the series:

>22 boldface: I'm referring to the later, blue, buckram covers as being more resilient than the green, silk, covers of the earlier edition. I have the latter, and whilst initially lovely, their fading has been a source of great sorrow to me, thus my comment about their resilience (not quite the right word, I do confess). I agree about the print size too.

>28 dianp:
That looks gorgeous.

I have about 12 of these, and that picture is making me want all the rest of them right now!

Wow! I am envious!

I've never read any Trollope at all. But in my eagerness to acquire a collection of FS volumes, I have picked up a copy of The Bertrams at a grand sum of 99p (including postage) from Ebay - I was the only bidder! Okay, the volume does have a mark on the front cover, but I would still class it as being in a "fair to good" condition rather than "poor".

This is now on my list of books to read. But I have no idea where it fits in with Trollope's other works, or if it is a good starting point. Can anyone advise?

At least at that price, I have lost nothing at all if I don't enjoy it.

>33 RMMee:

I must admit I have not read this one, but the general critical consensus is not encouraging. Read David Skilton's excellent introduction (carefully skirting round any spoilers) and you will see: "It has to be said that The Bertrams is one of Trollope's least celebrated novels." In his Autobiography, even Trollope admitted, "I do not know that I have ever heard it well spoken of even by my friends..." It falls into the category of "Social Satire" and Skilton has to allow that other novels of this kind, such as Mr Scarborough's Family and The Way We Live Now handle similar material much better. It came out between two particularly popular novels, Dr Thorne and Framley Parsonage, and suffered as a result.

So it might be a good idea to put it on hold for a while, until you have read the best of Trollope, examples of which have been given above in this thread, eg The Warden, Barchester Towers, The Way We Live Now or the first of the Palliser novels, Can You Forgive Her?.

Perhaps someone who has actually read The Bertrams will be able to make a compelling case for moving it higher up our "to read" list.

> 33

I am by no means a Trollope expert but am familiar with about 15 of his books, all fiction. The Bertrams, which I also recently purchased, does not fit into the two well known series, The Pallisers and The Barchester Series. Nor do I believe it is as well known as some of the stand alone works such as The Way We Live Now. I am looking forward to reading The Bertrams myself. Right now I am reading The Belton Estate, which is also lesser known, I think.

One suggestion I would make is to check out the BBC productions of Pallisers and Barchester Towers as well as The Way We Live Now; I think they are excellent. Also I find listening to Trollope's works unabridged on audible extremely enjoyable and easy to follow.

I am in a reading group and know from experience that Trollope is not to everyone's taste. We read The Warden in our group, and I was very impressed, but not everyone felt the same way. I hope that you enjoy Trollope because if you do there is certainly a plethora of material out there to look forward to reading and collecting!

Here is page 2 of the brochure of the Folio Society Edition of the novels of Anthony Trollope referred to in >28 dianp: above, which provides thumbnail sketches of the novels:

Here is page 3:

And page 4:

BRILLIANT!! Thanks for sharing the pamphlet.

same here

thanks

>13 SpoonFed: Eleven years on: Go for the Barsetshire novels. 'The Warden' is a short book (170 pages or so), so if you're not keen you're not going to waste too much time. If it clicks (and this book obviously can't expand as other Trollope does), then continue the series with Barchester Towers and through to the end. By the time one finishes the (six) volumes, one feels as if one knows the country of Barsetshire like the back on one's hand, together with the loves, hates, and problems of an entire county. The characterisations are superb also. Enjoy.

>21 Willoyd: I've read mine several times, and apart from a tiny mark on the back cover of 'Framley', mine are still pristine. I don't understand people having problems keeping books in good order.

>35 toodlessm: NO, NO, NO! Please never watch a television adaptation until one has read the book. It's good to have one's own image of, say, Glencora, rather than Susan Hampshire, or one's own Dr Grantly rather than Nigel Hawthorne. Not to mention Signora Neroni AND Glencora being played by the same person on television (Hampshire again). Avoid at all costs until one's read the books.

Also, for instance take Barchester Towers; the crawling letters writ to Tom Towers by Slope are brilliant reading; these are reduced to a two-minute slot in a conversation in the BBC's dramatisation.

The thing that struck me at the time and even now was the firm commitment by the FS to publish all 47 books. As one who collected many of them as they were released, we had the full confidence of seeing the full set.

I have to wonder if this particular firm commitment soured them on doing such an extensive promise again. I would assume that as time went on and new books were released the purchases waned. Imagine the FS today announcing a firm plan to publish 47 books in advance. Even these years later, I have a few gaps that I gradually fill in the whole collection. At the time it took an effort to keep up with the publication schedule when they were first released. I cannot imagine the discipline of Trollope to rite so many.

Also, I agree about the covers. I hesitate to say this but reading gloves are needed.

I have the entire set as well (except for the autobiography, which I deliberately refuse to buy). I like Trollope, although I definitely prefer Dickens.

I have read Can You Forgive Her?, The Way We Live Now, Dr. Whortle's School, Is He Poppenjoy?, Harry Heathrow of Gangoil, The Warden and Bachester Towers. I intend to finish the Barchester Novels and He Knew He Was Right this year.

I don't find the pale paper covered boards to be an issue at all. Mine are all second hand but none have grubby finger smudges on them.

>45 Forthwith:

The Folio Society had published the Barchester Novels and some short stories between 1976 and 1981, but the main reason why they later went on to produce an entire Trollope edition was John Letts, a somewhat larger-than-life figure with a huge enthusiasm for books as well as many other interests. Letts had co-chaired the Folio Society from 1971 to 1987 and during that time managed to double Folio membership. When he sold his share and left Folio in 1987 he went on to found the Trollope Society with the express purpose of publishing all 47 novels by subscription. It's therefore not so surprising that Folio was persuaded to come on board as co-publisher. Incidentally, this was the first time that a complete and uniform edition of Trollope had been published. Folio bowed out after the publication of the novels and Autobiography, but the Trollope Society went on to issue Trollope's short stories, travel books and other works. The typesetting (in Monotype Bell) is identical in both the Folio and Trollope Society editions but Folio issued the novels in a uniform binding of variant colours with newly-commissioned illustrations, while the Trollope Society binding was uniformly brown (for the novels) and only contained original illustrations where published in the original editions.

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/obituaries/john-letts-6103157.html

>43 JacobKirckman:
I don't understand people having problems keeping books in good order.
Well, good for you. I'm perfectly capable of keeping books in good order, and do.

>47 boldface:

Thanks for that, Jonathan. Some interesting stuff about John Letts that was new to me. I had some correspondence with him in the 70s/80s, mostly about my Folio wish lists and his forceful personality came through strongly. He was a man of decided opinions :) I think this must have been the first time I proposed Hesse's The Glass Bead Game and he agreed it was time for a Hesse revival but thought Steppenwolf would have more appeal. And forty years later they published it. He gave a decided thumbs down to Augustine's Confessions -a bit sniffy about that one - but they eventually published it in 1993. Of course to me he was just the guy at the Folio Society. I had no idea of his other accomplishments. A man in the tradition of Charles Ede and, like him, sadly missed.

>45 Forthwith: About halfway through publication of the series there was an offer from FS to buy the remaining volumes at a discount for a lump sum to be paid in advance. I wonder if this was a sign that sales were dropping off.

>47 boldface: I really likes this bit from the obituary:
" those who paid "up front" for all 48 getting their money back in full at the end", now there's a deal and a half.

I recently read Trollope's first novel (in the FS edition), The Macdermots of Ballycloran. Although not Catholic, he has a very sympathetic portrayal of an Irish priest who is a major character in the book. There is Irish dialect throughout. What is remarkable is that Trollope has the assurance of a master from his very first book. Although, I, too, prefer Dickens, his first work was just a collection of sketches (by Boz) although his second was the immortal The Pickwick Papers. I do not think anyone will consider The Macdermots of Ballycloran as such. A great read, though.

>50 pythagoras: It may have been partly that and partly an insurance policy against sales dropping below a level at which the runs were no longer at least minimally profitable. You have to admit, 48 volumes of Anthony Trollope is a commitment that even many enthusiasts would hesitate to make.

>53 whytewolf1: Is there a complete list of the FS Trollope set with each volume's first publication date?

>54 Frank_Zwolinski:
Anthony Trollope
(48 Volumes 1989-1999)



- The 6 Barsetshire Novels and Short Stories
The Warden, Barchester Towers, Doctor Thorne, Framley Parsonage, The Small House at Allington, The Last Chronicle of Barset
-The 6 Palliser Novels
Can You Forgive Her?, The Eustace Diamonds, Phineas Finn, The Duke’s Children,Phineas Redux, The Prime Minister
- The 4 Irish Novels
The Macdermots of Ballycloran, The Landleaguers, Castle Richmond, The Kellys and the O’Kellys
- The others
An Autobiography, An eye for an eye, An Old Man’s Love, Ayala’s Angel, Brown, Jones and Robinson, Cousin Henry, Doctor Wortle’s School, Harry Heathcote Of Gangoil: A Tale Of Australian Bush Life, He Knew He Was Right, Is He Popenjoy?, John Caldigate, Kept in the Dark, La Vendee: An Historical Romance, Lady Anna, Linda Tressel, Marion Fay, Miss Mackenzie, Mr Scarborough’s Family, Nina Balatka, Orley Farm, Rachel Ray, Ralph the Heir, Sir Harry Hotspur of Humblethwaite, The American senator, The Belton Estate, The Bertrams, The Claverings, The Fixed Period, The Golden Lion Of Granpere, The Three Clerks, The Vicar of Bullhampton, The Way We Live Now

>55 wcarter: Thank you for this information, but I would like to know the exact year for each book if that is possible; Is there a source for this?

>56 Frank_Zwolinski:
The FSD wiki here and the Complete List of FS Books here are sources for answers to almost every question about the Folio Society and its books.

You can search by year and title for the details of the year of publication, and you can read almost every prospectus and catalogue ever issued by the FS.