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Have you read any of Trollope's Palliser books?
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Posted by pammyfay (My Page) on Tue, Jul 20, 10 at 10:27
| Funny how the Internet takes you on winding trails! I was in an organizing/uncluttering blog's forums, where someone linked to a NYTimes commentary on "How to Lose a Legacy" (what to do with all those family heirlooms that you really didn't want anyway or which just don't fit your lifestyle but which come with pounds and pounds of memories and guilt), and a commenter refers to the value of the jewels that are the subject of Trollope's "The Eustace Diamonds."
Which I now know is part of a 6-book series that interconnect.
If you've read any, is it important to read the "first" book published, to get the basic footing for the Diamonds book? (I'd have to research that to see which that is!)
And having never read Trollope, I have no idea what I'm in for... |
Follow-Up Postings:
RE: Have you read any of Trollope's Palliser books?
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Pammyfay, I have only sniffed around the edges of Trollope's Barchester series, but many years ago in the early '70's the BBC made a TV series of the Palliser novels, which was very well done.
Not quite off topic: I was visiting the City of Gloucester for the first time and was quite alone walking round a quiet corner of the Cathedral exterior, when a be-whiskered man appeared dressed in a high 'stove-pipe hat' and frock coat. I momentarily thought I had entered a time warp but followed him, to find a wedding scene was being filmed for the series . . . of which I then had never heard.
The public were able to enter the Cathedral and watch the filming which was taking place in the Choir. During a pause someone came over and said 'Hallo' and I was surprised to see my God-Mother's s-in-Law, Martin Lisemore, who was the producer of the series. He had been an assistant producer on The Forsyte Saga (the late '60's b&w version) and went on to do I Claudius, but was sadly killed in a car accident just as filming finished. A terrible waste of a young talent.
And I still haven't read the Pallisers . . . but recommend you start with the first novel and work your way through and/or get the DVD's. I have read Fanny Trollope's (A's mother) The Domestic Manners of the Americans which paints an interesting picture of that country during the 1830's when the T family lived there. Not well-received by the Americans as she showed them as rather 'rough and ready', but a useful 'historical document' today. |
Here is a link that might be useful: The Pallisers on DVD
RE: Have you read any of Trollope's Palliser books?
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| I actually liked the TV version of The Barchester Chronicles very much, but I must admit I dived into it only because (a very, very young) Alan Rickman was in it! |
RE: Have you read any of Trollope's Palliser books?
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| Pammyfay, I read (for a university course) The Prime Minister which is the fifth book in the series. We didn't suffer from not having read the previous titles in the series. The first book in the Palliser series is Can You Forgive Her?. I have to warn you that these books are massive, even by Victorian standards. |
RE: Have you read any of Trollope's Palliser books?
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| The books can all stand alone, but you will benefit from reading them in order, as there are references and characters reappear. They are wordy, as you might expect, but like Austen, if you give yourself reading time, it is easy to fall into the rhythm of the writing and then it flows. I find that if I try to read Trollope or Austen or Collins in short "pick-up-and-put-down" bursts, it is frustrating-but if I devote a block of a couple hours or more and relax into it, it is great fun. The books were meant to pass the long evenings and were often read aloud while the ladies sewed, so there is a lot of description and stage-setting. If you find you like Trollope and move onto the Barchester Chronicles, which is another series by Trollope set in and around a cathedral town, you can then follow the descendants of those characters in a series written before, during and after WW II by Angela Thirkell. There are over 30 books in that series. It took me ten years of searching used book stores (pre-abebooks and its ilk), but I managed to collect all of them, although my set is not all from the same publishers or editions-but I could read it straight through. About 6 months after I scored the last one, a niche publisher in England began reissuing them in affordable paperback! |
RE: Have you read any of Trollope's Palliser books?
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| I've read all of the Palliser novels and seen the PBS-TV series too, and I agree that it's helpful to take them in order but not essential. Just about anything by Trollope is readable, I think. |
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