Trollope sightings

Trollope/Thirkell/Barsetshire sighting in today's NYT op/ed: Life, Love and the Pleasures of Life in Barsetshire.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/04/opinion/04fri3.html?_r=1&th&emc=th&amp...

Also, Phineas Finn was named as one of the top five novels about marriage in today's Wall St. Journal.

Jane Smiley on Trollope's The Kellys and the O'Kellys in the Guardian.

>2 marise: Thanks for link, marise. The Kellys and the O'Kellys has now been bumped a little higher up my TBR list as a result!

> 3 In some thread or another I posted on The Kellys and the O'Kellys. Much underrated AT, and notable for the acuteness of AT's ear in reproducing the Irish vernacular without going over the line into parody. He also had a sure touch with the dramatic/comedic encounters between Mrs. Kelly and the villain. Certainly it's better than, say, The Belton Estate.

It sounds good to me, too, and I have started looking for a copy.

ETA: I remember your post on this book, stringcat3, but didn't find it when I took a quick look back through the threads.

I found stringcat3's comments from a couple of other threads and have copied and pasted them here:

"I recommend The Kellys and the O'Kellys. It starts awfully slowly - you have to plow (or plough) through a couple of chapters on Irish politics which were probably of high interest in their day but are of none now. You should just skim them, with no harm done to the rest of the story. The novel really does get rolling once we encounter the villain, and it has some of the sharpest dialogue I've yet encountered in Trollope. It reminded me of the best exchanges in Barchester Towers. Trollope had an extraordinary gift for dialogue - none of the flowery 19th century declamations that become excruciating. And he captures the flavor and snap of Irish repartee without descending into mockery."

"The Kellys and the O'Kellys has some very funny scenes and a good villain."

Thank you so much, digifish!! The "sharp dialogue" and "the flavor and snap of Irish repartee" really do intrigue me! I don't mind the slow start, as long as I know there is something more to look forward to! Thanks!

Indeed, stringcat3 has 'marketed' the book well! :)

>8 digifish_books: I take that as a high compliment, digifish, as I am indeed a marketer by trade.

I was talking to one of our research vendors this week who said her mother has read all of AT's novels - yes, all 45. We can only aspire.

And then our VP of Marketing, who says she's mad for English novels, has never heard of AT.

Through the yahoo Trollope forum I found another Trollope sighting in W.R.LeFanu's Seventy Years of Irish Life (Chapter 14) and started to read the rest of the memoir online at chaptersofdublin.com. HIGHLY entertaining, with many quintessentially Irish exchanges, such as those recorded about Whately, the Archbishop of Dublin.

From today's New York Times review of A Voyage Round John Mortimer (who created Rumpole):

"John Mortimer could no more have contented himself with the Inns of Court than Anthony Trollope could have confined himself to the post office."

And I meant to post this one in May, also from the NY Times book reviews (5/18/08). Kate Field: The Many Lives of a Nineteenth-Century American Journalist: "Anthony Trollope developed a protracted crush on her and used her as the model for several of his characters."

This is actually a Barchester sighting: M.R. James' Collected Ghost Stories includes "The Stalls of Barchester Cathedral." No other AT references figure in the tale, but James' little homage was a pleasant surprise.

And I must recommend the collection. They're more a combo of weird and ghost stories, nothing terribly gruesome (I read them before bed with no deleterious effects noted) but terribly well-written. I'm on a heavy Sheridan Le Fanu binge and stumbled across James about a month ago.

I have it, stringcat3, and now I will have to go dig it up from one of my TBR mountains!

OT -a Charlotte Bronte connection with Le Fanu: she lifted the plot of Jane Eyre (1847) from his story "A Chapter in the History of a Tyrone Family" (1839), which he later expanded into a novel called The Wyvern Mystery. Masterpiece Theater made a two-part adaptation.

Minor sighting in a recent interview with Louis Bayard (go find his novels right now - very engrossing) in the 9/16/08 Columbus Dispatch:

Q: What draws you to the 19th century and keeps you going back for more?

A: Short answer: nobody can come back and sue you. Slightly longer answer: I've always loved Victorian authors -- Dickens, pre-eminently, but also George Eliot and Thackeray and Trollope; and, on the American side, Melville and Mark Twain. I guess the 19th century is far enough away to be exotic but close enough to still be accessible.

A YouTube video about The Macdermots of Ballycloran and the 'Anthony Trollope Trail' in Drumsna. (Video has some quality 'issues'...)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KkEzKqwy8zE

> 16 Great Caesar's ghost! How did you every locate this video, digi? And to think I spend my time on youtube looking for funny cat videos (check out the ninja cat - hilarious unless you hate cats).

Everyone's invited to visit us here in Salinas CA, John Steinbeck's hometown.

>17 stringcat3: Someone had mentioned the video in another Trollope group on errmm... (dare I say it?) ... Facebook! (a site I very rarely visit as I am also usually looking for funny cat videos on YouTube when not here or reading ;D )

AT mentioned in passing -

Just buzzed through a delightful novella by Alan Bennett: The Uncommon Reader. The Queen accidentally comes across a library's bookmobile at Westminster, borrows a book to be polite and becomes an avid and omnivorous reader. Highly recommended - you'll get through it in about 90 minutes as it's only 120 pages and easy going.

Anyway: page 76 "She flew to Scotland happy in the (occasionally exasperating) company of Tristram Shandy, and when she got bored with him Trollope (Anthony) was never far away." The parens are something of a joke, as about 30 pages earlier the Queen has taken to asking people in crowds what they're reading. "At this most people looked blank (and sometimes panic-stricken) but, nothing daunted, the equerries came up with a list of suggestions. Though this meant that the Queen came away with a disproportionate notion of the popularity of Andy McNab and the near universal affection for Joanna Trollope, no matter; at least embarrassment had been avoided."

On page 113, the Queen has asked a gathering of her former Privy Councilors whether any of them had ever read Proust. " 'I've read Trollope,' said a former foreign secretary. 'One is glad to hear it,' said the Queen, 'but Trollope is not Proust.' The home secretary, who had read neither, nodded sagely."

> 18 digifish, have you seen the cat riding the Roomba? Probably on Youtube by now, or you can catch it on Purina's site.

>19 stringcat3: Yes, I think I saw the feline Roomba driver on icanhascheezburger.com :D

>20 digifish_books: Reminds me Snoopy driving the Zamboni.

Here's an article on an academic digging into AT's Australian & New Zealand memoirs:

http://www.independentweekly.com.au/news/local/news/General/me-and-my-trollope/1...

Speaking of things antipodean: that new Nicole Kidman/Hugh Jackman (rowrrrr!) epic "Australia" opened here on Wednesday to generally favorable reviews. Will probably see it tomorrow, as today was Black Friday shopping. Seemed more Grey - not as many crowds.

I think I must find a copy of those memoirs! My AT wishlist grows and grows...

Will be interested in what you think of the movie, so please report back to us! I usually avoid the hyped blockbuster types, but this one might be an exception.

In Robertson Davies' Tempest-Tost, the first book of his Salterton trilogy, the local teen-aged beauty Griselda Webster is reading in the tub:

"She liked romances of two kinds; if she were not reading Anthony Trollope, whose slow, common-sense stories, and whose staid, common-sense lovers she greatly admired, she like spicy tales of the type which usually appear in paper-bound copies ... She prodded a chocolate clinically, and as it appeared to be a soft centre she popped it into her mouth. She turned a page of The Vicar of Bullhampton. Peace settled on St. Agnes' for the night."

As I mentioned in another thread, a reviewer of the trilogy claimed "Davies has done for Salterton what Trollope did for Barchester."

This is a literal Trollope sighting (the books, that is - he doesn't "walk" as far as I know). I was just in the Brattle Book Shop in Boston and found a great selection of Folio Society AT for just $15 each. Of course the selection was better before I bought 9. As I recall (they're shipping them for me), I got John Caldigate, An Old Man's Love, An Eye For An Eye, The Bertrams, La Vendee, The Landleaguers, The Struggles of Brown, Jones and Robinson, Miss Mackenzie and Marion Fay. All are in excellent condition. I know, I'm gloating. I make no apologies. oh frabjous day

There are at least 20 volumes left, including the Autobiography, Orley Farm, Dr. Whortle, Rachel Ray, another La Vendee, The Belton Estate, Ayala's Angel, Sir Harry Hotspur ... that's all I can remember. www.brattlebookshop.com or 617-542-0210 or 800-447-9595. They're on shelves right at the front of the shop so if you call they can easily look over and tell you what's there.

Wow, stringcat3, what a haul!! Good for you!

>24 stringcat3: The Struggles of Brown, Jones and Robinson..... booooo!!! Of course, I'm not jealous or anything ;D

>26 digifish_books: I know - I almost didn't buy it, but you don't see it that often, and I'm determined to read all 47.

I remember they also had Mr. Scarborough's Family. Remember - they'll ship anywhere.

Cool!

At this point, I don't pay for Trollope; I just download his books for free to my kindle off Project Guttenburg. My kindle will pay for itself with Trollope alone.

I still love paper books, tho.

>28 littlegeek: But how does that Kindle look on your shelf? ;-)

Hmmmm....A Sony e-reader. Now that would be perfect....The Kindle won't work in Australia yet.

Gutenburg doesn't have all of AT's books but the do have a fair amount. There is also http://etext.library.adelaide.edu.au/t/trollope/anthony/

#29 It's never on a shelf, I'm always reading from it. They do come with a case that looks like a book cover, so I could put it on a bookshelf if I wanted.

I would love to have a kindle, littlegeek! Then I wouldn't have to pack a separate suitcase just for my books when I go on vacation, ha ha!

>31 littlegeek: littlegeek, hon, that was a joke. As in, "books do furnish a room" to borrow Anthony Powell's observation, but a Kindle doesn't. Never mind. Stand-up comedy is not my calling.

>30 digifish_books: digi, read all reviews of the Sony carefully. I recall it having some major flaws. Something about buttons being awkwardly placed so one is continually paging up or down accidentally.

We're way off-thread here! Someone quick - post a Trollope sighting!

33 I already have plenty of "furnishings" in my house as it is!
;-)

right! back to Trollope!

Okay, not really a Trollope sighting, but an article of close interest. I'd dearly like to see the full study - no doubt some of AT's characters (e.g., Melmotte). I'll see whether I can track it down, as the researcher that I purport to be.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2009/jan/14/victorian-novels-evolution-altruis...

Victorian novels helped us evolve into better people, say psychologists
Classic novels like Dracula and Middlemarch instilled the values of cooperation and the suppression of hunger for power

Updike as the American Trollope

http://www.nytimes. com/2009/ 01/29/opinion/ 29thu4.html? emc=tnt&tntemail 0=y

As someone from Yahoo's Trollope forum pointed out, yeah, except that Trollope was a great novelist and Updike a mediocre one.

A touch! A palpable touch!

More on Updike/Trollope, posted yesterday by Jan R. Reber on Yahoo's Trollope forum (trollope @yahoogroups.com):

Walter, I knew John Updike since I was a child. Our parents were close and
John's father was a mentor to me. No one I know found Updike easy to get
along with. I don't think there is much to compare between Trollope and
Updike. Here are a few reasons:

. Philosophically, Updike rejected social mores as restrictive and
unnatural. This had a lot to do with his childhood in Shillington, PA where
his father was regarded as an outcast because he was quite eccentric and
outspoken, and his mother felt that her son was far superior to his
surroundings. (I was sent to boarding school at a younger age than my parents
had planned because she kept telling my parents to get me out of town.) In
Trollope, norms are powerful and must be reckoned with while Updike
emphasizes their destructive elements.

. Updike's most powerful character, Rabbit Engstrom, has no parallel
in Trollope. His age, sexual drives, and modern circumstances are outside
Trollope's consciousness.

. Updike's Barthian perspective, which seems essential to a lot of
his writing, would not have appealed to Trollope.

. Updike believed in the power of the word of eloquent description
as much as he believed in the power of his sensibilities.

. Updike's fiction seems to me to evolve. His early work, _Poorhouse
Fair_ is a Thackeray-like attack on the values of his youth, _The Centaur_
is a novel that wrestles with his father, _Rabbit Run_ seems to me to
project Updike's own life views into a fantasy of what his father's life
could have been. I don't think Trollope used his fiction to work out his
family issues although he does use family personalities and circumstances in
his fiction it is not for purposes of examining their dynamics.

. If there is a comparison between the two it is family dynamics.
Updike's mother reminds me of Trollope's mother in many ways, and Updike had
a complicated relationship with his father, as Trollope did. Wesley Updike
was judged a failure by his wife who constantly belittled him, but he was a
great guy in my opinion. She thought of herself as a poet. Trollope's early
life at public school and Updike's early tensions are important elements in
how they shaped their literary lives.

. While Trollope was not a book reviewer, he did write literary
essays on Thackeray and others, and he spent years working on a critical
examination of Shakespeare that was never completed.

. Trollope and Updike both liked to write short stories but both had
difficulties in the briefer format.

I think the Rabbit novels are on a par with books like _Catcher in the Rye_
and Cheever stories in capturing and distilling a particular time, place,
culture. Updike's other works don't seem to reach that level of
accomplishment.

Very interesting, stringcat3. I also think Trollope was much better at writing female characters than Updike.

I've always been rather lukewarm about Updike. I did like Gertrude and Claudius, though.

> 38 agree - Updike always struck me as just another vaguely misogynistic WASP who wants to pull you into his gin-soaked misery. But thanks for reminding me about Gertrude and Claudius, which is one of the two Updike novels I've ever managed to finished, and the only one I liked. It's very un-Updike, though.

OT: what do you (collectively or severally) think of using TROLLOPIAN to describe an aficionado of dear AT and TROLLOPEAN to form the adjective? I've seen the latter also used for the noun and am for some reason put off by it. The nominal form Trollopian corresponds to Sherlockian, which you no doubt recognize as the American style to denote a follower of the great consulting detective, while the British tend to prefer Holmesian.

And why do these thoughts strike in the wee hours ...

Have been watching the excellent adaptation of Powell's A Dance to the Music of Time starring James Purefoy as Nick Jenkins (available through Netflix). In the third DVD there's a short, rather funny conversation on Trollope between Nick and a general. The humor is in the situation: they've both dived under the dining table in the officers' mess during an air raid. The general notices that Nick has a book with him and wants to know whether he likes Trollope. When he hears 'no' he grills Nick on the reasons why not.

Well, it's funnier when you actually see it.

From lawsoflife.co.uk

The Trollope Ploy was popularised by a critical diplomatic manoeuvre during the Cuban missile crisis of 1962. On October 26th, President Kennedy received a long rambling but basically conciliatory private letter from Premier Nikita Khrushchev. The next day, however, the Russians publicly released a second letter which took a much harder line. This left Kennedy and his advisers in a quandary. Had Khrushchev changed his mind? Was he really in control of events on the Soviet side? Or had the second letter perhaps been composed first but delayed in transmission as it passed through different levels of approval in the Russian foreign office?

At this point the president’s brother and attorney general Robert F. Kennedy came up with what Arthur Schlesinger Jr. called “a thought of breathtaking simplicity and ingenuity: why not ignore the second Khrushchev message and reply to the first?” (A Thousand Days, 1965). The president delegated his brother and his special counsel Theodore C. Sorenson to prepare a reply to the first letter. The terms of the American reply were accepted by Khrushchev on October 28th and the two nations backed away from the brink of nuclear war.

The manoeuvre was not characterised as the Trollope Ploy in the heat of the moment; the name came later after the participants in the crisis had time to analyse what had happened. As Sorenson reported: “Much misinformation has been written about who said what and about such terms as ‘hawks and doves’, ‘think tank’, ‘Ex Comm’, and ‘Trollope ploy’ ,which I never heard used at the time” (Kennedy, 1965).

The ‘Trollope’ here comes from the novelist Anthony Trollope whose Victorian heroines were inclined to interpret a slight squeeze of the hand as a proposal of marriage. The ‘Ploy’ part - the gambit or manoeuvre - was popularised in this sense by Stephen Potter, wiley author of Gamesmanship or The Art of Winning Games without Actually Cheating (1947) and several sequels in which he showed how the principles explained in the first breakthrough work about games could be applied to the smaller world of life.

Ireland has issued an AT stamp!

http://www.stampnew s.com/stamps/ stamps_2009/ stamp_1246036655 _590100.html

AT's The Way We Live Now is #1 on Newsweek's 50 Books For Our Times!

"We know it's insane. We know people will ask why on earth we think that an 1875 British satirical novel is the book you need to read right now—or, for that matter, why it even made the cut. The fact is, no one needs another best-of list telling you how great The Great Gatsby is. What we do need, in a world with precious little time to read (and think), is to know which books—new or old, fiction or nonfiction—open a window on the times we live in, whether they deal directly with the issues of today or simply help us see ourselves in new and surprising ways. Which is why we'd like you to sit down with Anthony Trollope, and these 49 other remarkably trenchant voices...

The title says it all. Trollope's satire of financial (and moral) crisis in Victorian England even has a Madoff-before-Madoff, a tragic swindler named Augustus Melmotte."

#44 I'd have to say I agree completely. Nothing has changed.

Yes, unfortunately. Nothing has changed.

That's one I keep intending to reread, too.

Evidently, Barchester Towers is perfect 'summer reading' fare:

"For so many reasons, Barchester Towers is the perfect book for summer: a terrific story, intelligent without being ponderous, and incredibly funny. It is totally compulsive, like eating hot, boiled, salted peanuts. You want to get the barbecue cleared away, the dishes done and the kids in bed, and settle down for another hour in Trollope's world."

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/books/its-summer-not-dumber/article1222228/

From the Yahoo! Trollope list today:

For the iPod, a long Trollope Walk through Central
London which passes many places associated with either the author or his characters.

The result can be heard either by subscribing

to London Walks from iTunes, or by clicking on the home page
and listening to the walk from there.

There was a brief discussion of The Warden in this week's BBC Radio 4 program, 'A Good Read' recorded at the Birmingham Book Festival. Discussion of the book starts around the 2.40 minute mark and the program is available online until Nov 4.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b006v8jn

Miss Mackenzie is Joanna Trollope's choice for the 'Neglected Classics' on BBC Radio 4 at http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/features/open-book/neglected-classics/joanna-trollop...

The winner of neglected classic vote will be dramatised next year http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/features/open-book/neglected-classics/

In the today's Wall Street Journal, Alexander Theroux reviewed "Poisoned Pens" (edited by Gary Dexter), a compilation of nasty things writers have said and written about each other.

H. Rider Haggard, the author of "King Solomon's Mines," denounced Anthony
Trollope (whom he met in South Africa) for being "obstinate as a pig" and
filled with "peculiar ideas."

He he.

LOL, that gave me the giggles!

But I'll bet it was true.

Yeah, I don't have any trouble believing that about Trollope!

In an interview with Susan Howatch, she was asked whether Trollope was one of her literary influences. She said yes, along with Iris Murdoch, Graham Greene and Raymond Chandler.

OT: from Yahoo's Trollope thread, the question was posed "who is a modern Trollope?"; this entry I thought was quite interesting:

I'd like to suggest Edith Wharton. She died in 1937, so IMHO she can be
considered modern. Many people think she was writing contemporary fiction
with her novels set in the Gilded Age, but they were actually historical,
set in the period just before her own.

She has the same insight into characters and Trollope's ability to set up
situations where your sympathies waver among many characters, all of whom
have good reason to believe they are doing the right thing. Light on plot
and heavy on character development and exploration, she was my favorite
author before I discovered AT.

She also was an industrious writer and leaves a large legacy of work to be
explored. She was not taken seriously in her own time and shares the
distinction with Trollope of being patronized and denigrated by Henry James.

That's very interesting, stringcat3! Must give this some thought. Last year I read The Reef by Wharton and it certainly fits that description!

I wonder if there is a list of writers who were patronized and denigrated by HJ? I might want to be sure and read them all!

>57 marise: There have to be quite a few - he spread the snark around!

Modern Trollope: David Simon of The Wire. Anyone who loves complex characters who are deeply flawed yet sympathetic should watch the whole series.

In rereading Cold Mountain, I ran across this: "As for books, the first thing that fell to hand was a three-volume Trollope, near cube in its mass. She had no particular desire to read it, but it was there."

In the introduction to OUP's edition of Margaret Oliphant's "The Doctor's Family and Other Stories" Merryn Williams favorably compares her Chronicles of Carlingford series to AT's Barset books.

Watched the film version of Evelyn Waugh's "The Loved One" (a loose adaptation, sadly dated). As Dennis, the nebbishy hero is given a tour of the cemetary grounds by Aimee, the comely cosmetician, this dialogue caught my ear:

Aimee: This is Barchester Terrace, for loved ones of the financial professions.

Dennis: Of the financial professions?

Aimee: Yes, bankers, manufacturers and other loved ones with large backing.

In A Week in December, one of the main characters has a cat named Septimus Harding. The character is an avowed fan of Trollope (and I would guess that means that so is Sebastian Faulks). I'm only starting the novel, so there may be other sightings...

Jane Smiley on The Kellys and the O'Kellys; contains SPOILERS

http://www.guardian .co.uk/books/ 2008/apr/ 19/fiction. anthonytrollope

In Wall Street Journal 24 July 2010: "Tolstoy and Trollope Fans, Meet Couperus." Michael Dirda's review of Louis Couperus' novel Eline Vere, translated by Ina Rilke. Glowing review for the book and the translation from the Dutch.

>65 stringcat3: Thanks! I shall add that one to my wishlist.

I have just finished reading Dan Cruickshank's The Royal Chelsea Hospital: The Place And The People, which along with its historical and architectural accounts has brief side-bar interviews with the staff working at the hospital when the book was written. One of them, the Secretary, describes the place as, "A bit like Gilbert and Sullivan meets Trollope", and goes on to elaborate, "...but there are also the deep-laid intrigues, petty jealousies and financial dealings that distinguish the darker moments of Trollope's Barchester novels."

Not so much a sighting as an audio - watched "My Boy Jack" on Masterpiece Theater last night. Kipling was looking for cigarets in his library - pulled out a few volumes from the shelf to find the pack his son had hidden behind them. As he lights up he remarks that Jack's choice of authors was poor as he should have remembered that his father liked to "dip into Trollope" occasionally.

Trollope in the 'blogosphere' :

http://randomjottings.typepad.com/random_jottings_of_an_ope/2011/01/i-am-a-troll...

http://randomjottings.typepad.com/random_jottings_of_an_ope/2011/01/i-am-a-troll...

Okay, this isn't a REAL Trollope sighting ... had a talented friend build wall-to-wall, floor-to-ceiling bookshelves in our guest room, so now all my Trollope (along with the cookbooks, biography, art and miscellaneous topics) is sitting up properly instead of being crammed into a double-rowed single shelf. Shows off the Folio Editions a treat.

There, I'm done. But is it so wrong to love bookshelves?

BTW: if you're feeling particularly nerdy, Henry Petroski's history of book storage, The Book on the Shelf, is wonderful.

Found on the yahoo trollope group's latest: in the context of Weinergate, a Trollope sighting discussing the portrayal of politicians' behaviors in his Palliser novels.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/10/opinion/10brooks.html?_r=1&emc=tnt&tnt...

Pulled Robertson Davies The Merry Heart off my shelf yesterday ... in the first essay (actually was a talk delivered at the U. of Manitoba in 1980) called "A Rake At Reading" he says,

"Too much unrelieved Dickens is bad for you, and as an antidote I recommend Anthony Trollope, one of the greatest of realistic novelists, though, as with all realism, his has, with the passing of years, taken on a romantic glow. Trollope called Dickens 'Mr. Popular Sentiment,' and it is true that Dickens would do extraordinary things, and sometimes unworthy things, to catch the crowd. But not even Trollope could be as realistic as he knew how; read his Autobiography and learn how much he had to falsify the love scenes in his novels to make them palatable to an age that dearly loved a long, eloquent, agonized proposal uttered by a young man to a girl who fully intended to accept him, and would have been a fool if she had done otherwise. Of course, neither Dickens nor Trollope, nor any of their English or American contemporaries, was free to write what they knew about the sexual involvements of their characters."

The England of Elizabeth by A L Rowse, "... the cosier domesticity of episcopal arrangements - the long line of evolution that was to lead, in the fulness of time, to Mrs Proudie."

There's a group read of Framley Parsonage here: http://www.librarything.com/topic/154823#4123607

Just finished reading two random Angela Thirkell books A Peace Breaks Out and A Double Affair I was rather suprised at how many Trollope characters live on in legend or descendants in her books.

>75 quartzite:
I think Thirkell must have started out just using Barsetshire placenames as a convenient fictional setting to save making her own up, with the occasional passing reference to events in Trollope as an in-joke for her more educated readers, but by the time you get to the post-war books so many descendants of Trollope's county families have crept in that it starts to read like a deliberate set of sequels to the Barchester and Palliser novels.

Off-thread question: just ran across the following start to a sentence in The Macdermots of Ballycloran: "The very scraughs of which the roofs are composed are germinating afresh ..." Cannot find a definition for "scraughs." Anyone?

Thought I'd ask here as this topic is the most active in the AT group. Thanks-

I think it's more usually written "scraw" (Irish "scraith") - a turf for covering a roof, according to OED.

>78 thorold: thanks, thorold! Still struggling through The Macdermots but am determined to get all AT's novels under my belt.

A (sort of) Trollope sighting: am reading the excellent Sherlock Holmes pastiches of Donald Thomas. In the collection The Execution of Sherlock Holmes, the third story, "The Queen of the Night," features the theft of a spectacular jewel owned by the Longstaffes and worn in this case by Adolphus "Dolly" Jr. at the coronation of Edward VII. We get much discussion of the Longstaffe financial issues and their less than stellar behavior but we never actually see or hear from any of them directly.

If your taste runs to things Sherlockian, Thomas' pastiches are far beyond the usual run pallid efforts (not to damn with faint praise!). In another collection, Sherlock Holmes and the Ghosts of Bly, Thomas sets the sleuth to solving the mystery in James' The Turn of the Screw. And I must say it's as creepy as the original story.

Have to admit to being slightly excited about moving in to a flat around the corner from Trollope's old house in Montagu Square, London. Took a photo of the plaque!! John Lennon lived in the same street, but that's not nearly as exciting.

Just got John Sunderland's Who Betrays Elizabeth Bennet?, another of his delightful collections of literary puzzles. Included is a question regarding Trollope's The Way We Live Now: " How criminal is Melmotte and when is he criminalized?"

Good (and favorable) review of the newly restored version of The Duke's Children.

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/11/books/review/trollope-uncut.html?emc=edit_tnt_...

That article sounds interesting; I see it appeared in 2008 and here it is 2015.