Anthony Trollope

"The Landleaguers" was the last novel Anthony Trollope wrote. Though Trollope had planned for Landleaguers to have 40 chapters, he barely made it into the 49th when he had the stroke that ended his writing and, shortly thereafter, his life. "The Landleaguers" is set in Ireland, a country which Trollope had visited. The earlier Irish woe Trollope had chronicled was the potato famine; in "The Landleaguers," it is the often bloody conflict between English protestants and Irish Catholics. Trollope loved Ireland and his novels often reflect that, but "The Landleaguers", with its realistic depiction of terrorism, seems to despair of Ireland's future. There is a subplot involving the daughter of an American supporter of the Irish campaign against the English; the daughter has come to London to further her career and there are sexual intrigues there. A landlord's son is murdered by rural terrorists, a crime that replays the real-life assassination of Lord Frederic Cavendish in Dublin in 1882, and "The Landleaguers" traces the violent disruption of civil life as tenants, organized in the Land League, plot to force their landlords to give them a better deal. But part of Trollope's imaginative response to the crisis takes the form of an intriguingly uncharacteristic sub-plot, in which a young American woman travels to London and tries to make a name for herself on the operatic stage, while her father becomes a landleaguing Member of Parliament. Trollope's son Henry wrote a brief foreword to the novel and added a two-sentence postscript announcing the fates that Trollope had planned for the novel's main characters.

Anthony Trollope (1815-1882) was a major English novelist of the Victorian period, whose classic works of fiction are notable for their character development and keen insight into social, political and gender issues. This selected collection of his great novels - 'The Warde', 'Barchester Towers' and 'The Way We Lie Now' - presented in a single volume is an essential edition for collectors, students and general enthusiasts of Victorian literature.

The Claverings is an uncomfortable yet compelling read. Our hero is Harry Clavering, who is jilted by the beautiful Julia Brabazon in favor of a dissipated, but rich, old aristocrat, Lord Ongar. Clavering devotes himself to a career as an apprentice civil engineer and becomes engaged to his master's daughter, Florence Burton. He looks set for a successful family and business life until the widowed Julia Brabazon, now Lady Ongar, reappears. He must choose between a safe but predictable life with Florence, or the glittering and indolent role of Julia's husband.