Tom Hollander as Dr Thorne (scripted by Jerome Fellowes, Hollander is right for the part)
Friends and readers,
About four days ago I joined in on a meme on face-book: you are asked to cite 10 books that influenced you strongly or made a real impact on you or your life, one a day for 10 days, with the book cover or illustration if there is one. I’ve cited three thus far: Austen’s Sense and Sensibility, Samuel Richardson’s Clarissa, and Suzanne Therault’s Un cenacle humanist de la Renaissance autour Vittoria Colonna, chatelaine d’Ischia. Day 10/4: Anthony Trollope’s Dr Thorne. I was somewhere between 18 and 20 and read it in a college class. In this case I can share the original cover, but I have a bit of a qualification:
While I just didn’t forget this novel, wanted to write my term paper on Trollope (but the professor didn’t approve because he thought Trollope not quite first-rate, he was just a mirror of his age, his fiction “told” instead of “showing” so I wrote on Dickens), and remembered ever after the amused calm in the narrator’s voice as he patiently explained he was forced to take two long chapters at the opening because he had to tell us the previous history of the characters and place before his book could officially begin; while I didn’t forget it, I didn’t go on to read more Trollope for 11 years and then it was the Pallisers in black-and-white on an old TV that set me off, and I just loved Can You Forgive You? this rich extraordinary world teaming with all sorts of life, but I had to stop (I read all six Pallisers in a row in tandem with Jim, my husband) as I was teaching and doing a dissertation on Richardson’s Clarissa. So it was the third start that mattered finally: age 43, my father came to the hospital where I had ended up after a bad car accident and gave me a copy of The Vicar of Bullhampton (the Dover edition) and said Trollope would get me through (it was Metropolitan hospital in Upper Manhattan in NYC where the place was so underfunded there was but one person to do X-rays in the whole place): “how wise Trollope is,” said my father.
I still have a copy of that first (for me) CYFH? and in spring 2019 I shall start teaching all six Pallisers in a row at two OLLIs (American University and George Mason University). Next spring at both OLLIs I shall begin a six term journey with the people there on the Pallisers, one a term, beginning with CYFH?.
We just finished watching all 26 episodes of the Pallisers one each week on TrollopeandHisContemporaries@groups.io. Raven makes Lady Glenn the quietly tragic heroine of the series:
Susan Hampshire as Lady Glencora McClusky in a symbolic bethrothal in the first episode of the 26 Pallisers
I’ve written some 30 blogs on the Pallisers, and published a paper on its intertextuality and that of Barchester Chronicles, with other Victorian film adaptations. I hope to write yet another blog, this one a single comprehensive concise one on the series as a whole before I go off on holiday this summer.
I still have the copy of The Vicar of Bullhampton that my father gave me too, with me today, this morning. Here’s its cover ….
Need I cite my book, Trollope on the Net, five published papers, two of them on the film adaptations (by Andrew Davies of The Way We Live Now and He Knew He Was Right), two reviews, a huge part of this website, years of running reading groups on the Net, participation in the face-book Trollope society page, the New York Society itself, giving paper there, giving papers at two Trollope conferences, and now teaching several classes on Barsetshire novels, Beyond Barsetshire, the short stories.
Anthony Trollope as traveler by Julia Margaret Cameron, albumen print, 1864
Could there be more impact?
Ellen
Rory O’Farrell: “In the 1998 Norah Ephron film “You’ve Got Mail”, the book Kathleen Kelly (Meg Ryan) is reading in the hamburger place is the Oxford World Classics edition of “Can You Forgive Her” (freeze frame on the video will confirm this).
I had read The Warden and Barchester Towers before joining this group. Then I reread them here followed by Dr. Thorne and Framley Parsonage. I liked them but it was The Small House at Allington that completely won me over and has made me say ever since that Trollope is my favorite writer, though I feel I betray Dickens by saying so since he was my favorite for many years before that.
Tyler Tichelaar
So you came to Trollope by way of Barsetshire, Tyler. It is touching that you feel you betrayed Dickens by turning to Trollope. We (or I) get these personal feelings about or towards author. I really felt in some of personal relationship with Jenny Diski after reading her books and columns for 20 years. When she died, I felt grieved like I had lost a friend. Ellen
Lady Glencora Palliser was presented as a quietly tragic heroine in the 1974 series? I never really got that impression, especially as the series progressed past the first six episodes.
Well perhaps in my next blog I’ll make a case for that. Ellen
Ellen, I love Doctor Thorne. I reread it for the first time since my 20s last summer and it is truly one of the most enjoyable books I’ve ever read. Profs were so stuffy about Trollope and I was honestly afraid to mention him even to my more flexible professors. Glad things have changed to accommodate him. The Paliser class is a great idea.
It’s good to hear from you. I know periodically your blog is about a book by Trollope you’ve reread. It’s rare you are reading one for the first time. Can you remember the first you ever read? the first that made you like Trollope so?
Ellen, it was Can You Forgive Her? I powered through the six Palliser books (mass market paperbacks with Susan Hampshire on the cover) the year PBS showed The Pallisers on TV. They were entrancing, but somehow I knew they wouldn’t go over well with my English profs, because I would not have been able to say anything smart about the structure, etc. I do wonder if they read Trollope too!
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