Anthony Trollope, página 9 de 27

Trollope es uno de los grandes maestros de la edad de oro de la literatura inglesa, la que dio autores de la categoría de Jane Austen, Dickens o Thackeray. El custodio es la historia del reverendo Harding, un hombre al que nada le falta para merecer el calificativo de alma bendita. Es el encargado de velar por la conservacion de un asilo y los ancianos que lo habitan. Lo ultimo que se imagina es que entre sus manos esta a punto de estallar un escandalo que arramblara con la tranquilidad de todo el condado de Barsetshire. Gracias a Trollope conocemos mejor el corazon humano. Henry James

Barchester Towers concerns the leading clergy of the cathedral city of Barchester. The much loved bishop having died, all expectations are that his son, Archdeacon Grantly, will succeed him. Owing to the passage of the power of patronage to a new Prime Minister, a newcomer, the far more Evangelical Bishop Proudie, gains the see. His wife, Mrs. Proudie, exercises an undue influence over the new bishop, making herself as well as the bishop unpopular with most of the clergy of the diocese. Her interference to veto the reappointment of the universally popular Mr. Septimus Harding (Protagonist of Trollopes earlier novel, The Warden) as warden of Hirams Hospital is not well received, even though she gives the position to a needy clergyman, Mr Quiverful, with 14 children to support.Even less popular than Mrs. Proudie is the bishops new chaplain, the hypocritical and sycophantic Mr. Obadiah Slope, who decides it would be expedient to marry Hardings wealthy widowed daughter, Eleanor Bold. Slope hopes to win her favour by interfering in the controversy over the wardenship. The Bishop or rather Mr. Slope under the orders of Mrs. Proudie, also orders the return of the prebendary Dr. Vesey Stanhope from Italy. Stanhope has been in Italy recovering from a sore throat for 12 years and has spent his time catching butterflies. With him to the Cathedral Close come his wife and their three adult children. The younger of Dr. Stanhopes two daughters causes consternation in the Palace and threatens the plans of Mr. Slope. Signora Madeline Vesey Neroni is a disabled serial flirt with a young daughter and a mysterious Italian husband, whom she has left. Mrs Proudie is appalled and considers her an unsafe influence on her daughters, servants and Mr. Slope. Mr. Slope is drawn like a moth to a flame and cannot keep away. Dr. Stanhopes son Bertie is skilled at spending money but not at making it; his sisters think marriage to rich Eleanor Bold will help.The Old Dean of the Cathedral having died, Mr. Slope campaigns to become Dean but Mr. Harding is offered the preferment, with a beautiful house in the Close and fifteen acres of garden. Mr. Harding considers himself unsuitable and with the help of the archdeacon, arranges that Mr. Arabin be made Dean. With the Stanhopes return to Italy, life in the Cathedral Close returns to normal and Mr. Harding continues his life of gentleness and music.

Alice Vavasor cannot decide whether to marry her ambitious but violent cousin George or the upright and gentlemanly John Grey - and finds herself accepting and rejecting each of them in turn. Increasingly confused about her own feelings and unable to forgive herself for such vacillation, her situation is contrasted with that of her friend Lady Glencora - forced to marry the rising politician Plantagenet Palliser in order to prevent the worthless Burgo Fitzgerald from wasting her vast fortune. In asking his readers to pardon Alice for her transgression of the Victorian moral code, Trollope created a telling and wide-ranging account of the social world of his day.

When shrewd and poor Lizzie Greystock marries she is fully aware of her wealthy husband's approaching death.

The mysterious financier Augustus Melmotte buys a great house in London, where he succeeds in persuading many prominent Londoners to invest in his fictitious railroad, the South Central Pacific and Mexican. Melmotte also attempts to secure for himself a place in the House of Commons and to marry his daughter to a titled aristocrat. His daughter, however, falls for the rakish Felix Carbury and steals the money to finance their elopement; Felix gambles it away and jilts her, and she marries an American speculator as crooked as her father. Melmotte''s various schemes and forgeries lead to his unmasking and, in one of Trollope''s most powerful scenes, he kills himself. Although unpopular and considered almost unbearably cynical when it first appeared in 1875, THE WAY WE LIVE NOW is widely considered Trollope''s masterpiece--a scathing indictment of the materialism and greed that permeated the Victorian Age, and a devastating satire of the effects of crass commercialism on politics, the upper classes, the literary world, marriage, and financial institutions. It also contains the memorable portrait of Lady Carbury, an unscrupulous writer who will do anything to promote her books.

The Duke''s Children is the last of Trollope''s six Palliser novels and concludes the story of Plantagenet Palliser, former Prime Minister and latterly Duke of Omnium. Lady Glencora is dead and the Duke, widowed and grieving, is left with the responsibility of three difficult children. His sons are sent down from university in disgrace and the Duke is further dismayed when his daughter Lady Mary and his eldest son Silverbridge both propose to marry out of the English nobility. One by one the Duke''s dearest wishes are thwarted, yet at the same time he discovers how parents can learn from their children, and is rescued from his own inflexible pride and snobbery by the strength of his private affections. As Birch remarks in her introduction, ''of all the many late developers in Trollope''s fiction, Palliser is the most impressive''. The Duke''s Children (1880) is resonant with the memories of the Duke of Omnium who had come to be more than a fiction to Trollope, ''so much do I love the man whose character I had endeavoured to portray''.

The second of Trollope's Palliser novels tells of the career of a hot-blooded middle-class politician whose sexual energies bring him much success with women.