The Trollope Challenge
My reading resolution for 2011 is to finish reading all of Trollope’s 47 novels. The short stories and non-fiction will have to wait ’til next year.
Here’s the current tally:
- Can You Forgive Her?
- Phineas Finn
- The Eustace Diamonds
- Phineas Redux
- He Knew He Was Right
- The Way We Live Now
- Lady Anna
- Is He Popenjoy?
- Rachel Ray
- Linda Tressel
- Cousin Henry
- The Vicar of Bullhampton
- Kept in the Dark
- Miss Mackenzie
- The Belton Estate
- The Claverings
- The American Senator
- John Caldigate
- The Prime Minister
- The Duke’s Children
- Ayala’s Angel
- The Fixed Period
- Dr Wortle’s School
- An Old Man’s Love
- The Warden
- Barchester Towers
- Dr Thorne
- An Eye for an Eye
- Framley Parsonage
- The Small House at Allington
- The Last Chronicle of Barset
- Marion Fay
- Mr Scarborough’s Family
- Nina Balatka
- Sir Harry Hotspur of Humblethwaite
- Harry Heathcote of Gangoil
- The Struggles of Brown, Jones and Robinson
- The Golden Lion of Granpere
- The Macdermots of Ballycloran
- Ralph the Heir
- The Three Clerks
- Orley Farm
- The Bertrams
- La Vendée
- The Kelly’s and the O’Kellys (nearly there!)
- Castle Richmond (one to go!)
- The Landleaguers (done it!)
{ 12 comments… read them below or add one }
youre ahead of me. at the beginning of this year i worked through charlotte yong chronologically and now im working my way thru trollope chronologically. mostly its rereading since ive already read almost everything that was on project gutenberg a few years ago. however this time im trying to be fairly strictly chronological except that i skipped the first three books by mistake and i just couldnt stomach the struggles of brown smith and robinson. linda tressel was pretty awful too but i managed to get thru it. im on phineas finn at this point. the other exception is that i skipped orley farm which ive already read several times. after i finish phineas ill go back and do the first three. ive downloaded almost everything to my kindle and am thinking that will definitely last me thru my one month vacation in england next month. i love ebooks! thanks for the link to braddon – i read lady audleys secret back in the 80s but havent tried any of the others, now i will.
Many thanks for your comment, Rachel. It’s good to hear that someone else is embarking on their own challenge! I rather liked ‘The Struggles of Brown, Smith and Robinson’ and ‘Linda Tressel’ – it’s interesting that Trollope provokes such different reactions in his readers.
I’ve never managed to finish a Charlotte Yonge, so I’d love some advice on where to start.
Read Trollope very lightly in the past. Last year, on advice from a doctor to relax, I picked up Framley Parsonage. I don’t know exactly what has captured me yet, but ‘it’ has me good and tight.
My husband gifted me a Nook, and the first download was all of Trollope’s novels, short stories and non-fiction for .. get this .. $1.09 with tax. Now, my Miss Posey Nook is with me always.
Like you, I intent to read all the Trollope I can find. But I would rather not do it in a year or 2 or whatever. I’d like to savor it over time. In the thrall of Vicar of Bulhampton currently. Mr. Fenwick is, so far, my Trollope hero.
Good luck on your project. I’ll be reading your blog.
Diahann
Seattle, WA
Hello Diahann. Many thanks for your comment. Nooks aren’t available over here, so I’d been wondering what they were like. Given you’ve named yours, she must be a very important member of the family! I’m rattling through the Trollopes mainly so that I can avoid sweeping generalisations in my thesis. I shall be going back and savouring my favourites. I loved The Vicar of Bullhampton and it sounds as though you’re enjoying it, too. Do let me know what you think to the others. I’m rather behind with my Trollope posts at the moment, but hope to catch up soon.
I started on the 29th October 2011 so am just over a month into it. I got a complete iPad/Kindle download for £3.71 for everything (including the short stories) and have just finished my thirteenth novel (The Fixed Period) reading in the (fairly random) order in which they appear. Two of the short stories were interspersed: ‘The Chateau of Prince Polignac’ and ‘The Courtship of Susan Bell’. I won’t attempt any other fiction until I have worked my way through the lot: they become easier to pick up when your head is attuned to Trollope’s style and the social environment of which he is writing.
Goodness, 13 Trollopes in a month! Are you aiming to be done by the end of 2011?
Much as I envy the readers who can get through dozens of books in a year, I seem unable to join their ranks. So I’ve learned to be content with a Trollope every Christmas season — just finished Framley Parsonage. At this rate I know I won’t get through them all but I expect I’ll be able to get through the remaining Barsetshire novels, the Pallisers, and The Way We Live Now. And his Autobiography.
Wow, what an acheivement! Congratulations! I have only read 28 of the novels, having started with the Barset novels in 2007. ‘Mr Scarborough’s Family’ will be my next AT…. it is ready and waiting on my ereader
Thank you, Laura! I must confess that not all of them are worth reading. I’ll be posting a list of Top Trollopes this month. Hope you enjoy Mr Scarborough.
I took a break over Christmas for some non-fiction including Clive James’ “A Point of View”, and the late Christopher Hitchens’ “God is Not Great”. Ironically, the GING immediately preceded my resumption with Linda Tressel – which haunts me still. Horrible story, skillfully written: it should be compulsory reading for anyone wishing to understand (modern) arranged marriages enforced against the wishes of the woman. I’ve passed the half-way mark (24 novels and 10 short stories), but after reading Cicero I am skipping the non-fiction: it was secondary or tertiary material from scholarship 150 years out of date. I hated An Eye for an Eye (grim little tale) but John Bull at the Guadalquivir is the best short story I have ever read.
Most of what I read is non-fiction (a lot of history and biography and modern science) but one of the advantages of reading fiction is that you are there in the scene and not just looking down as an observer. As I wrote earlier, Linda Tressel gave me a greater insight into the horrors of arranged marriages than anything else I have read in a long life, and I have had a similar Eureka moment from Mr Scarborough’s Family – just finished. Dolly Grey tells her father “I have the maid servants (plural) to look after, and to guard against their lovers . . . and to see that the cook does not give the fragments to the policeman.” Vast amounts of time must have been spent by the characters in Trollope’s books in communicating with the servants and other lower orders, but this communication is almost completely written out of the stories as irrelevant because it does not involve fellow human beings. Trollope’s England must have been very like Apartheid South Africa or the African colonies: I remember a young Rhodesian woman telling me (just post-UDI) that the population of Rhodesia was quarter of a million . . .
Many thanks for your comment, Martin. You’ve reminded me that I must review Linda Tressel. Like you, I was horrified by the portrayal of arranged (or forced) marriages, and it was a very uncomfortable read.
You make a very good point about apartheid – that describes very well the position of servants, who were treated as being almost a different species, with baser instincts and simpler needs. If they thought of them as “people” then it would be unacceptable to demand that they empty their chamberpots, etc. The first stage of any form of bigotry seems to be deciding that the object is somehow less human.