Anthony Trollope as photographed by Julia Margaret Cameron, 1864 — in his travelling hat
Dear friends and readers,
A shorter blog than usual. Not quite from sheer idleness — really from being alone as usual and so aware others are taking time off for fun — and a love of making lists: I decided to make a list of all those Trollope fictions I have read/skim-read, read thoroughly now and again since the pandemic began: 2 and 1/2 years ago and almost came up with this astounding list. I say almost because I had left out three until friends and fellow readers on Trollope&Peers @groups.io reminded me of them. I also preface this list by saying that: I teach a Trollope novel every fall, I belong to three readings lists on-line two of which are either devoted wholly to Trollope or read Trollope frequently, and all for me were rereads:
Phineas Redux
Framley Parsonage
Last Chronicle of Barset
MacDermots of Ballycloran
Three Clerks
Barchester Towers
The Way We Live Now
John Caldigate
The Prime Minister
The Vicar of Bullhampton
How the Mastiffs went to Iceland
Dr Thorne
short stories: “Malachi’s Cove,” “A Ride Across Palestine,” “An Unprotected Female at the Pyramids”
The American Senator
Orley Farm
The Small House at Allington (now twice over the pandemic time)
short stories: “The Parson’s Daughter of Oxney Colne”
Castle Richmond
The above is more or less in the order I read them.
Just now The Eustace Diamonds about which I wrote today:
The appropriate recent cover for the latest Oxford edition
I’m enjoying it very much. Frank Greystock makes a good contrast/comparison to Adolphus Crosbie (Small House, just read by the online group and being read by my groups.io group) because Greystock is just as ambitious, he just as “helplessly” finds himself asking Lucy Morris to marry him, and he _does not go back on his word- — even after much pressure and he stays away. But he never betrays Lucy to Lizzie.
The other thing is I’m finding it a more moral book than people openly admit — I see the morality coming out this way: this time I’m seeing the humor and comedy of the book. I admit I could never see it before. Something in me has changed since last Christmas: I’m not happier not more optimistic (oh no) but I am more cheerful, more able to distance myself. So I am seeing the quarrels between Lucy and her Scottish steward and manager of horses, Andrew Gowran as very funny.
How moral? I see in her impulses in me: I’m recognizing myself in her and since I know she is so awful to recognize myself in her is salutary. The mirror held up is teaching me.I want to start listening to The Moonstone (I just bought the audio book in the form of audio CDs) as soon as it comes to see if it too obsesses over the jewel. The text of ED and Lizzie both obsess over them. Very funny are her problems with the iron box. It’s big and heavy, attracts attention, cannot be hid, is too heavy for her, but she must clutch it if she is clutch her diamonds. She hasn’t quite got it in her just to put the necklace in her pocket — I thought to myself, has she no inside pockets? But even she does not have the nerve lest they slip out and get lost … I recently wrote and delivered a paper on a Woman and Her Boxes — about Jane Austen and how women were so legally destitute that often it may be said their very identity was in the box they kept their stuff in.
Below you see a Victorian cast iron box for carrying jewels in.
For fall I’ll reread The Last Chronicle of Barset (so a second time during this pandemic time)
two stories: “The Journey to Panama,” “Miss Ophelia Gledd”
at the same time Can You Forgive Her?
I conclude I must find strength and comfort in Trollope over these recent solitary years. His texts are enormously readable. Reading Trollope with others has been a mainstay. I just don’t realize it … all the time. I do know that many years ago my father brought me a copy of The Vicar of Bullhampton and told me the author was a wise man; the book got me through an awful week in Metropolitan hospital in NYC; and a few years later a battered copy of The Last Chronicle of Barset got me through the ordeal of a 5 week vacation-stay in Rome (with excursions to Naples, Pompeii, Ischia). I am a more critical reader than I used to be, but my basic emotional reaction has remained the same.
Ellen
Ellen And Jim Have A Blog, Two 
I was asked: “ED is indeed a morality play. But it is also one of the funniest of AT’s books – why do you think you missed the humor before now? Just curious.”
and replied: “Maybe I couldn’t understand how anyone could find such a vicious and therefore potentially very cruel person amusing. Granted, as a woman she had power only over the marginalized, and that limited, but it did not make her values any less pernicious. Now I am able to distance myself; I’m old and “going out” (I’m 75); and the way the world is going nowadays, Lizzie’s acts seem to be peccadilloes which can’t go anywhere, limited in their power to maim others. She is so morally stupid, a kind of Boris Johnson in skirts.”
to which the person replied: “Lucy herself is not amusing, but the events she sets in motion allow AT ample opportunity to ridicule the human foibles and societal hypocrisy of his characters. His sarcasm and subtle, or not so subtle, digs are comedy gold. But I understand your view: when one has had to deal with toxic people, there’s no humor apparent (I grew up with a malignant narcissist). BTW: your Boris comparison is excellent.”
Michael Gibson: “I’d prefer the box to the diamonds. Ideal for sandwiches.”
I agree.
Thank you SO much for your regular postings.
Thank you for being here.
Elaine Oswald’s reply: Elaine’s reply: I started off in March 2020 with a reread of Anne Frank’s diary because I wanted to know how people survived isolation. What helped those families hidden away was to study and learn from correspondence courses. I’ve spent the last 2 yrs doing pretty much the same. I started with Thomas Hardy, still one of my favorite authors. I’ve also been rereading Jane Austen. And “A Far Cry from Kensington” by Muriel Spark, who is very Austenesque in this novel. I’ve also read a contemporary novelist, Elizabeth Strout, who is insightful. When I look back on my reading, I realize I have been immersed in how people cope in trying times. For my TV series, I went back to Foyle’s War (at your recommendation) and found your notes very useful.
Me again: I know a number of people (or a lot) seemed to choose books which provided analogies to our situation. The most moving account of this kind of reading was done at the small 18th century group I go to in October of 2021 — she read Daniel Defoe’s Journal of a Plague Year and in her talk somehow applied it to herself isolated in Pennsylvania, near Gettysburg, teaching at the small private college there remotely and taking care of, home-schooling two daughters. What was most striking was her emotional state was partly the result of where she lived at the time (and does so still) during the Pandemic: that area of Pa is partly Trump territory and she had to listen patiently to his lies, deliberate thwarting of anyone doing anything constructive.
I know both Elaine lives in the UK. It did make a difference and I felt when Biden got in, I quickly felt a sigh of relief kind of mood where I live — centrist democrat.
I did look for solace, for support — especially at night through the movies I saw all four Mansfield Park films; all of the 1995 P&P (Andrew Davies, w/Jennifer Ehle and Colin Firth). I find Davies’s films very absorbing and cheering finally so also watched other of his. I am looking forward to our reading of Bleak House as an excuse to re-see Davies’ Bleak House.
Other single authors I really got involved with: E. M. Forster — almost every course I gave there was a book by Forster in the bunch. Although I love the French language, and read it so much more easily and better than Italian (years and years ago was speaking it), it’s rare that except for books by women they draw me.
Just now dialoguing with Maureen Murdock’s Heroine’s Journey — actually a self-help book as literary archetypal study. Murdock’s approach is personally directed: you’d think at 75 I would say I know all this but I am still evolving it seems. What a long time it has taken to find and to see myself.