Later Short Stories

by Anthony Trollope, John Sutherland (Editor)

Trollope's later stories, covering the period from 1866 to his death in 1882, offer a series of snapshots of the writer in his maturity and in the later, darker phases of his career. The stories collected here show a writer of extraordinary range, in subject matter, narrative device, and tone. With the companion volume, Early Short Stories, they offer readers a complete set of Trollope's hard-to-find shorter fiction.

Genres: Short Stories, Classics, Fiction, Victorian

628 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1882

About the author

Anthony Trollope became one of the most successful, prolific and respected English novelists of the Victorian era. Some of Trollope's best-loved works, known as the Chronicles of Barsetshire, revolve around the imaginary county of Barsetshire; he also wrote penetrating novels on political, social, and gender issues and conflicts of his day.

Trollope has always been a popular novelist. Noted fans have included Sir Alec Guinness (who never travelled without a Trollope novel), former British Prime Ministers Harold Macmillan and Sir John Major, economist John Kenneth Galbraith, American novelists Sue Grafton and Dominick Dunne and soap opera writer Harding Lemay. Trollope's literary reputation dipped somewhat during the last years of his life, but he regained the esteem of critics by the mid-twentieth century.
See also http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anthony_...

Reviews

[Margaret · Rating 4 out of 5]

Trollope's Later Short Stories comprises all of his stories from 1866 until his death in 1882; it includes fifteen stories from three collections published in his lifetime (Lotta Schmidt and Other Stories, An Editor's Tales, and Why Frau Frohmann Raised Her Prices and Other Stories) as well as four stories published in magazines but not gathered into a collection until after Trollope's death.

Though many of the stories are fairly standard love tales, there is a large range of subject and tone, from the very funny "Christmas at Thompson Hall" (involving a mustard plaster which goes astray) to the much darker "Catherine Carmichael" and "The Spotted Dog". Trollope regarded the latter as one of his best stories, and I have to agree; although this tale of a scholar who sinks into poverty and wretchedness is far more horrifying than Trollope's usual domestic or society tales, it is powerfully written and imagined - there is a description of the scholar, Mackenzie, lying "stretched in the torpor of dead intoxication" in his filthy rooms, surrounded by his starving, naked children, that is as dire as anything in Dickens.

Another standout is "The Telegraph Girl", which although in the end a love story, deals interestingly with women's employment in the late 19th century through the experiences of Lucy Graham, who takes a job as a telegraph girl for the post office. The collection ends with a charming Barsetshire story (the last Trollope set in his fictional county), "The Two Heroines of Plumpington".

[Penny -Thecatladybooknook · Rating 3 out of 5]

Average 3.25

Thankfully this collection ended on a few high notes but I enjoyed the first Collection I read the first part of the year much more.

[K.]

Includes the "last, last chronicle of Barset," which was wonderful. Favorite so far..."Christmas at Thompson Hall."

Wish I had more time to devour this NOW. Oh well, it will be sweeter the longer it lasts.