TROLLOPE DE LUXE

New Zealand Listener, Volume 22, Issue 546, 9 December 1949, Page 18

TROLLOPE DE LUXE

THE OXFORD TROLLOPE: Crown Edition. "Can You Forgive Her?" Two volumes. Geoffrey Cumberlege, Oxford University Press. English Price, 30/-. P HERE is a widespread idea that the boom in Anthony Trollope began in the second world war. The Spectator seemed to fhink so recently. The boom dates to the first war, as this reviewer can testify, for he was one of those who discovered Trollope as a refuge in those critical times. Wartime Punch paid him a tribute in verse. That Trollope was so long coming into new favour was due largely to his own frank disclosure of his methods of composition. The incurably romantic English public could not believe that a man who wrote for/set hours every day, and if the time was not up started another chapter, (even, one seems to remember, beginning another book), could call up the necessary inspiration. They were shocked by such a matter-of-fact approach to art. The first war provided conditions favourable for a revival, Men and women found in him, and especially in the Barsetshire series, a means of escape to a peaceful and stable world. Trollope did not lose this position, and a second war enhanced it. The boom has spread to America, where scholarship is busy with his novels, and

there is a Trollope Journal and probably a Trollope Society. There could be no better proof of the reality of this AngloAmerican interest than the issue by the Oxford Press of these two beautiful well-documented volumes of Can You Forgive Her?, the first of what. are called the "Palliser" series of political novels, after Plantagenet Palliser, one of the principal characters. Phineas Finn, The Eustace Diamonds, Phineas Redux, The Prime Minister, and The Duke's Children, are to follow in this series, but the Oxford Press plans to go on to other novels and end with the Autobiography. Michael Sadleir, the leading English authority on Trollope, is the general editor, and writes an introduction to this venture. American men of letters are consulting Trollope manuscripts in their country to decide doubtful readings, and it is hoped they will contribute introductions to some of the stories. Trollope is read for two reasons. His novels are period pieces: "To the present generation," says Sir Edward Marsh in his preface, "his picture is antediluvian," and "it is pleasant to live for a space in a legendary era of peace and plenty." But Trollope was also "so true to his subject as he saw it" that his truth continues to hold good. He is not among the greatest novelists, but his best work deserves to be called great. There is some of it in this uneven but fascinating story, Can You Forgive Her? Of the three love plots, one is beneath Trollope-little better than padding — but the other two are admirably worked out, and Alice, whose fluctuations between two lovers give the book its title, Plantagenet Palliser, and his wife Lady Glencora, show Trollope’s genius for character. Indeed ‘Trollope himself thought that his chance of lasting fame ¢which he doubted) rested on Plantagenet Palliser, Lady Glencora, and the Reverend Mr Crawlev in The Last

Chronicles of Barset. —

A.

M.