Trollope’s Small House at Allington: Another summer syllabus

Vignette for “Mr Crosbie meets an old clergyman on his way to Courcy Castle” (John Everett Millais, Chapter 6 of The Small House at Allington)

A Syllabus

The Oscher LifeLong Learning Institute at George Mason University
Day: 6 Wednesdays, 11:50 am to 1:15 pm, Tallwood, 4210 Roberts Road, Fairfax
Dates: June 15 – July 20.
Dr Ellen Moody

Description of Course

Trollope’s own late map of Barsetshire, which indicates where to place Allington (look at top lefthand corner: Allington is between Silverbridge station and Guestwick Village)

Barsetshire 5: Trollope’s Small House at Allington

Geroulds’ map of Allington

We will read The Small House at Allington and Trollope’s short story, “The Parson’s Daughter at Oxney Colne.” Rumor hath it (she isn’t always treacherous) this ripely-mature psychologically subtle novel is still cited when someone asks, “Which Trollope novel should I read first?”, and it’s one that has never fallen out of print. I encourage those who take this course to first watch the 1983 BBC mini-series, Barchester Chronicles and read Dr Thorne (Barsetshire 3) before the course begins. Alas the recent ITV mini-series, Dr Thorne (by Julian Fellowes is poor and Framley Parsonage (Barsetshire 4) has never been filmed. Trollope himself resisted including The Small House in the first publication of the whole Barsetshire series, so an attempt will be made to see the book in the context of his wider oeuvre, and time permits but one great relevant short story of the parson’s daughter (set in Devonshire), will enable us to see its themes more clearly from the different setting. The usual Barsetshire semi-comic resolution in both The Small House and “The Parson’s Daughter” is derailed entirely with the London world so aggressive that the conflicts in failure and price of success for a kind of existence (wealthy, powerful, prestigious) rip apart the earlier fractured pastoral world – for our uncomfortable contemporary consideration. We will also have Millais’s delicately beautiful illustrations to look at. Please have read “The Parson’s Daughter of Oxney Colne” before term begins. 6 weeks.

Required: Anthony Trollope, The Small House at Allington, ed. Dinah Birch. London: Penguin, 1984. Also excellent intro in previous Oxford SHA, ed. James Kincaid ISBN 0192815520; and essay in back of Everyman SHA, ed. David Skilton (“Trollope and His Critics”) ISBN 9460877944

To view all Millais’s full page illustrations and vignette, go to Project Gutenberg.

The bull (Millais, “Lord de Guest at Home,” Ch 22)

For “The Parson’s Daughter of Oxney Colne,” there are on-line etexts:

The Literature Network
From The University of Adelaide collected edition of Trollope

Also recommended “A Journey to Panama”
University of Adelaide collected edition of Trollope

If you’re wanting to read more Trollope, “Parson’s Daughter” and “A Journey to Panama” both are also found in the superb Anthony Trollope: Early Short Stories, ed. notes John Sutherland. NY: Oxford, 1994. ISBN 019282984

Lady Alexandria and her mother pick out the carpets as Crosbie watches: “That won’t do” (Millais, “Preparations,” Ch 40)

Format: Study group meetings will be a mix of informal lecture and group discussion.

June 15: Trollope’s life, career; 1st 4 Barsetshires books; “The Parson’s Daughter.”
June 22: SHA, Chs 1-12: “Squire of Allington” to “Lilian Dale … a Butterfly”
June 29: SHA, Chs 13-24: “Guestwick” to “A Mother & Father-in-law”; read also McMaster on “The Unfortunate Moth.”
July 6: SHA, Chs 25-36: “Adolphus Crosbie spends an Evening at his Club” to “‘See the conquering hero, comes!'”; read also Turner on The Small House & the Cornhill
July 13: SHA, Chs 37-48: “Old Man’s Complaint” to “Nemesis” and “Trollope’s “A Journey to Panama.”
July 20: SHA, Chapters 49-60, “Wedding” to end; read also Gilead on “Trollope’s Orphans.”

Johnny talks to Lady Julia: “She has refused me and it is all over” (Millais, “The Second Visit,” Ch 54)

Suggested outside reading and sources (articles will be sent by attachment) and two films:

Barchester Chronicles. BBC mini-series, 1983. Dr. Gilles. Script Alan Plater. Featuring Donald Pleasance, Nigel Hawthorne, Alan Rickman, Susan Hampshire.
Bareham, Tony, ed. The Barsetshire Novels: A Casebook. London: Macmillan, 1983.
Dr Thorne. ITV mini-series, 2016. Dr.Niall McCormick. Script Julian Fellowes. Featuring Tom Hollander, Stephanie Martini
Gerould, Winifred Gregory and James Thayer. A Guide to Trollope: Index to Characters and Places, Digests of Plots. Princeton UP, 1987.
Gilead, Sarah. “Trollope’s Orphans and ‘the Power of Adequate Performance,” Texas Studies in Language and Literature, 27:1 (1985):86-105.
McDonald, Susan Peck. Anthony Trollope. Boston: Twayne, 1987.
McMasters, Juliet. “The Unfortunate Moth: The Unifying Theme of The Small House at Allington, Nineteeth Century Fiction, 26:2 (1962):127-44
Overton, Bill. The Unofficial Trollope. NJ: Barnes & Noble, 1982.
Snow, C. P. Trollope: An Illustrated Biography. New York: New Amsterdam, 1975.
Turner, Mark. “Gendered Issues: Intertextuality and The Small House at Allington in Cornhill Magazine, Victorian Periodicals Review, 26:4 (1993):228-34

Ford Madox Brown (1821-93), Hampstead from my Window

On-line group readings and blogs:

From my website on Anthony Trollope
A group reading of The Warden
A blog on Barsetshire Towers
Shoverdosing on Barchester Chronicles: the BBC mini-series
Dr Thorne
Julian Fellowes’s Unwitting Dr Thorne: not quite hijacked by the elite
Framley Parsonage
A group reading of The Small House at Allington

Tom Hollander as a film Dr Thorne (he is right for the part as written in the book)