Transcriber's Note:

The cover image was created by the transcriber and is placed in the public domain.

EXCURSIONS IN

VICTORIAN BIBLIOGRAPHY

“If it is true that the Victorian time was ugly and vulgar, the excitement of those years between 1848 and 1890 was something like that of a religious revival.”

The Early Life of Mark Rutherford.

ANTHONY TROLLOPE

BENJAMIN DISRAELI

FREDERICK MARRYAT

WILKIE COLLINS

CHARLES READE

G. J. WHYTE MELVILLE

MRS. GASKELL

AND

HERMAN MELVILLE

EXCURSIONS IN VICTORIAN BIBLIOGRAPHY

BY

MICHAEL SADLEIR

LONDON

CHAUNDY & COX

40 MADDOX STREET

MCMXXII

TO MY

FATHER

ERRATA

P. [24] line 33 for “first” read “second.”
P. [24] line 36 for “Finn” read “Redux.”
P. [29] line 20 for “invented for” read “'presented' in.”

ADDENDUM.

P. [72]. The following paragraph should precede “1863/ A WELCOME, etc.”

1861

THE VICTORIA REGIA: A Volume of Original Contributions in Poetry and Prose. Edited by Adelaide A. Procter. London: Printed and Published by Emily Faithfull and Co., Victoria Press (for the Employment of Women), Great Coram Street, W.C. 1861. 1 vol. Royal 8vo (6¼ × 9⅜). Pp. x + 349 + (1). No half-title. Red-brown embossed cloth, all edges gilt, blocked in gold and blind. Red chocolate end-papers.

NOTE.—Pp. [187] to 214 are occupied by a story by Anthony Trollope entitled The Journey to Panama. This is the first appearance in book form of a tale afterwards published in Lotta Schmidt and other Stories.

CONTENTS

EXCURSIONS IN VICTORIAN BIBLIOGRAPHY

ADVERTISEMENT

This book is so essentially an accumulation of notes and so emphatically wanting in the qualities of completeness and learning proper to genuine bibliography that I have sought, even on the title-page, to indicate its limitations. It were indeed presumption to enter the field of nineteenth-century bibliography, in which already so much fine and skilful work has been accomplished, with the slight technical equipment to which I may lay claim. On the other hand, the experience of collectors conforms oddly to type, and where, in the study of certain Victorian first editions, I have found perplexity and doubt, others in the same study will likely find them too. Wherefore my annotations, in this book set in order and to a certain point rounded off, should help my fellow-students to a speedier knowledge of points and pitfalls in the collecting of their favourites than was easily accessible to myself. In time (maybe in short time) my work will be superseded by investigation more accomplished, by analysis more detailed. At such time collectors (and myself among them) will rightly substitute for this volume on their shelf of bibliographies the later, more comprehensive, handbooks that shall have taken its place. Meanwhile I dare to hope that the present work, with all its shortcomings, will find appreciative users, and among them a few who, realizing the difficulties that even so modest a compilation has been forced to surmount, will forgive its imperfections for the sake of its attributes.

With the general propriety of book-collecting I am not here concerned. Men there are to whom all collecting is folly; others to whom every passion is vile. To the logical asceticism of their private Utopias they are welcome, provided the lover be left to enjoy his mistress, the lepidopterist his butterflies, the bibliophile his books. Even the more subtle critic, who admits the lure of collecting but maintains that the craze of the first edition is senseless hysteria, shall not tempt me to dispute. This is a book about first editions, and will be read only by the initiate. If we be hystericals, we have at least our weakness in common. Let us therefore shut the door and compare symptoms, for we are all fools together.

The superior and the sceptical are now excluded from the privacy of our imaginary club-house. But a further reservation must be made. Although it were impractical idealism to demand that the collector transcend in his collecting every sordid consideration of market and fluctuating value, it is reasonable to look askance at the mere speculator. From the scope of this word I exclude, of course, the whole fraternity of booksellers. They exist frankly for the marketing of books; and who shall grudge them the profits of their toil? My animadversion is against the private person to whom rare books are mere scrip, to be bought and sold by telephone, their very titles meaningless, their contents utterly unknown. No doubt, if this book is of service at all, it will be of service incidentally to individuals of the kind described. That it should be so is unpreventable. But on the general ethics of collecting the compiler may be allowed the consolation of bearing his trivial testimony. The private collector who buys what he likes to read merits such reward as wise buying may earn for him. He, however, who buys by rote, puts away and resells, is no collector at all, but rather a trespasser on the preserves of the bookseller, taking advantage of a noble trade while sharing none of its burdens.

With this dictum I descend from the august to the particular. Collecting, collecting books, collecting first editions of books—all these are postulates. At this point is a parting of the ways. The frontiers of dispute now lie across our path; for within the bounds of the realm of first editions are to be found divergent tastes, conflicting fancies, all the clamour and thrust of an enthusiasm that grows ever more complex.

The collecting of first editions is, in its present form, a diversion of recent growth. Fifty years ago amateurs of books were few in number and, necessarily, rich in gold, for only the great books of past literature were regarded as fit material for collection, and great books, though cheaper then than now, were never to be had for love. But the passage of time has transformed, in another way than that of mere numbers, the community of book-collectors. Not only are there nowadays more collectors and a greater variety of books collected, but there has come to its own the great principle of original condition. This is not so pale a platitude as to many it will appear. A few book-buyers there have always been to whom original binding, original end-papers, uncut edges, incidental advertisements, errata slips, and half-titles have meant perfection. But they were rare exceptions. To the large majority a first edition was a book of a certain date without “Second” or “New Edition” on its title-page. Buyers of this school were indifferent to the disfigurement of library labels on side or end-paper; gave no thought to errata slips; but shaved their favourites, fore-edge and tail, dressed them in uniform calf gilt, affixed a bookplate, and went their way.

Such collectors as these are still amongst us, but they are now awaking to the folly of their past. The market—that indisputable witness to human taste—gives hard but practical proof of their wrongdoing. “Good and original condition” is nowadays three-quarters of a book's value, and the fraction, if it alters at all, will with the passage of time increase rather than decrease.

Is it too much to hope that the importance of original condition has now been permanently realized? The change, if it has really been effected, is in the main a healthy one. Although—for it is undeniable—the craze for the fine copy has produced its own extremism; although there are to-day book-lovers who refuse even to open the pages of their books lest, by such violation, they unsuit them for a mart in which, conventionally enough, virginity is value; although advance prospectuses and dust jackets of contemporary publications have scrupulously to be preserved in order that a “set” be genuinely complete—the desire for a book as issued does at least argue a consciousness of its individual personality. Standard authors, be they ancient or modern, can be purchased in calf by telephone and at so much per yard; but the obtaining of shelf furniture in original cloth is a matter of much seeking and of progress measured in fractions of an inch.

It has seemed well thus to emphasize the importance of “condition” to the modern book-collector, because “condition” in the case of such authors as those here examined is their admirer's greatest problem, and because the few bibliographies that already exist, while listing dates of publication and in one case at least supplying adequate collation of the various volumes, do not provide any real description of the externals of those volumes when in original state.

This description I have endeavoured to supply. That my work contains errors of omission I am certain; that it be free from errors of commission I may hardly dare to hope. But the trouble I have had even to arrive thus far on the way to completeness encourages belief that some portion of the donkey work may now be regarded as done for good and all, and that the trained minds of bibliographers proper may, if they incline, turn their talent to such refinements of detail as surely underlie many of the books herein examined.

To the collecting of first editions of Victorian novelists I came by the honourable way of literary liking. Brought up on Jane Austen, Scott, and Dickens, I read, during my years of flapperdom, Marryat, Trollope, and Wilkie Collins. Oxford and the audacities of undergraduate curiosity estranged me from all save the last quarter of the nineteenth century. While many of my contemporaries made sour sacrifice at the altars of disillusion, feeding their pessimism on Gissing and Butler, their taste for paradox on Bernard Shaw, I sought disreputable refuge among fleshly symbolists. The children of Baudelaire and Poe jostled the faint offspring of Gaelic legend on my shelves, and, while the voluptuous pallor of tuberoses shone against blue wall-paper, imagination floated on the dim tide of decadence. Came reaction as swift and irrational as were inevitable. From Paris echoed the clash of neo-barbarism, and before the strident onslaught of the rediscovered primitive the faint elegance of a pose too exhausted even for sin dissolved in air. They were great days, those early days of the new brutality. Blues and mauves gave place to orange checked with black, to vivid greens, to fierce outrageous reds. From the scented secrecy of lamplit boudoirs the young intellectual rushed into the wind and sunshine, and he who once made tired love to Phryne on a couch of silk now clipped the milkmaid grossly in a ditch. The way of other tastes went taste in letters and in art. After d'Annunzio, Synge; after Verlaine, Verhaeren; after Pater, Hardy; after Rops and Carrière, Gauguin and the rest.

For a while all was well. Cubism, a false interpretation of the synthetic doctrine of Cézanne, began its brief and rigid reign. Painters and writers fled naturalism in a search for true reality. Some are still wandering, drearily absurd, in the desert of their own bleak imaginings. The rest found reality, truly enough and rapidly enough—in war.

And now war has passed, leaving a world weary of fact and fever, weary of striving, weary almost of its own ideals. For long enough yet will persist turbulent discomfort and the clamour of quacks hawking the millennium; but at last will be peace, and it is surely a longing for that peace that has turned men's minds partly to high romance, but more generally to the manners and genius of a century ago. Those of an older generation than my own have, perhaps, never betrayed their gentle Victorian heritage. One may envy and applaud their wisdom. But we prodigals, returned from our rioting and sick with the husks of a démodé violence, stoop to any self-abasement, to any denial of our own past judgment, so we be allowed entry to the quiet courts and ordered opulence of the age we once affected to despise. Literary enthusiasm expresses itself in various ways. For my part to love an author is to collect him, for I can read no borrowed books, and only with difficulty such as are not first editions. Of the absurdity of this I am cheerfully aware. We have each one of us our foible, and this is mine. Considered broadly it is harmless enough, less cruel than killing birds, less degrading than drink. Naturally, however, it cannot be indulged to more than limited degree. Shakespeare and Sterne and Keats and Browning I may own, but in reprint. And so with many another. But to the extent possible in fact and a little beyond that permissible in money, I have contrived, from one phase to another, to keep myself fairly supplied with “reading firsts.” A decadent, I collected Verlaine and Mallarmé, Rimbaud and the Anglo-Irish nineties; a neo-primitive, I bought Synge and Verhaeren, Conrad and the chief Georgian poets of the new simplicity. And so matters progressed, while gradually novels ousted poetry from my shelves, and, again gradually, from the reading of modern novels I came once more to Trollope and the writers of his age.

It is not until one undertakes seriously the collecting of the less-known Victorian novelists that one realizes how prime the sport that their assembling offers, how destitute of guide-posts is the maze of their work. In the capacity of quarry few authors or groups of authors can rival those with whom this volume deals. The essence of collecting is the chase. The buyer of world-famous rarities, of which the whereabouts is trumpeted abroad, knows nothing of the thrill of that dusky provincial bookshop, among whose tumbled piles Victorians must surely lurk. The dapper expert in ingenious moderns with his prefaces, his cancel-titles, his censored (but disappointing) curiosa, his “works” and “limiteds,” can set one joy alone against my dozen. He may, if the gods be kind, on the shelves of bookshops proper find books that were bought for new, but have not sold and still remain, lacking an entry to the world of second-hand, still fresh, still offered at the published price. But in the main his life is one of “inside information”; his ally in the trade sells books instead of making them; it is the principle of the turf in terms of Whatman paper and grey Michalet boards. To the collector of Victorians (exception made, of course, of Dickens's parts, of Wuthering Heights, of Desperate Remedies, of other far reputed treasures) belongs neither the pursuit of “folios” across the world nor the click of the tape pegging out details of obscure pamphlets. Copies of three-volume novels by writers of reputation are hard to find at all, and very hard in anything of condition. Nevertheless, when found, they are often cheap. And then, when one is bought, there comes the reading of it.

And yet at times the collector feels forlorn and without guidance, for maybe the book he buys is a little known one, of which the very name is strange. Indeed, the lack of pointers obtrudes harshly, and in a sense no less literary than bibliographical. Not only is information as to actual titles scarce and unreliable, but among the great number of these writers' books the student must perforce read his own way to a sense of relative quality. At the cost of some hours of tedium and of many mistaken purchases I have arrived at a general knowledge of what these novelists wrote, when they wrote it, and what it looked like when it first appeared. This knowledge is herein set out for the possible assistance of all and sundry.

The relative value as literature or as story-telling of their many books makes more perilous judgment. I am no expert in comparative literature. I cannot even claim to have read all or nearly all the books that are, in the pages following, materially dissected. I have preferred therefore to make no pretence to serious literary criticism, but have contented myself with indicating at the beginning of each section the general character of the work of the writer in question, into what groups (if any) his novels fall, and have called attention here and there to certain little known or unknown stories that have pleased me and may, though hardly for that reason, please some of my contemporaries. Where an author has little attraction for me, I have said so. Books of all kinds are listed between these covers, and no single being will enjoy them all. But this is certain: that among them the inquirer, be his tastes what they may, will find reading to soothe him and to stimulate; will come to seek in the solidity, whether downright, fantastic, or lurid, in the quiet charm, in the dexterous sincerity of good Victorian fiction, a satisfaction of spirit produced by the novels of no other period of English literature.

Those who for years have known and pondered these Victorian tales will smile contemptuously at such pompous revelation of a stale secret. To them, in scorn of self and lest they lose any of that pleasurable pride allowable to old initiates who watch a novice at his scourgings, I offer the apology that is my book. Others, arrogant in knowledge of Dickensiana, in possession of priceless Borrows, of Jane Austen perfect in her boards, will turn from this humble chronicle of humble writers with the bored serenity of a brass hat on his way to conference. To them I make obeisance, wondering secretly whether great collections were amassed more joyfully than my little one. Last of all, however, may come a few, to whom, as to me, Trollope is balm and meat at once, who love three volumes of a novel for their very spacing and ornate expansiveness, who find shelves of cloth or labelled triplets more beautiful than any other shelves, to whom, in short, the collection and the reading of Victorian first editions is romance and quiet happiness. To them my book with all its faults will come kindly and joyfully, for they will welcome in it the voice of one who thinks and loves, as they do, the plaint of one suffering from the same sweet sickness as themselves.

A NOTE ON THE TERMS USED IN THE BIBLIOGRAPHIES WHICH FOLLOW
TOGETHER WITH OBSERVATIONS RELATIVE TO VICTORIAN BOOKMAKING, RECOMMENDATIONS TO COLLECTORS, AND AN APPEAL TO THE EXPERIENCE OF OTHER STUDENTS FOR ASSISTANCE AND CORRECTION

(i) I am aware that bibliographers proper designate by means of upright strokes the alignment of wording on the title-pages of books subject to their analysis. This mannerism I have eschewed, and for two reasons. In the first place, a bibliography so displayed baffles the inexpert reader by a suggestion of mathematical obscurity. Tempted by the desire to attract a few such readers to a book that, for all its overplus of sinew and lack of flesh, is in intention a tribute to a group of very human and consoling writers, I have sought an appearance of readability at the cost of a small technical sacrifice. The sacrifice is small—and here lies the second justification of my heterodox technique—because no variety of any one of the books hereafter listed depends either on the alignment of title-page wording or (save in a single case to which attention is specially drawn) on the phrasing, absence or presence of a note of reservation of foreign or dramatic rights. In short, that which is required for the identification of a first edition I have given; but beyond that—nothing.

(ii) The first editions of almost any author include, in addition to books written wholly by him, a number of works for some part of which only he is responsible. These secondary items cannot be neglected by collectors, for any book in which for the first time is published an essay, a story, a poem, or what not by one particular writer ranks as a first edition of that writer. Naturally, however, complete works take precedence over partial works, and I have grouped at the end of each section of this book such partial or minor first editions as I have been able to identify.

It must be clearly understood that first magazine publication is not here referred to. The only periodical issue of a book that can rank with book issue is that in parts, according to which the text of a novel made its appearance in monthly or weekly sections, separately wrappered, under its own title and unaccompanied by any extraneous matter save advertisements. Part issues are essential to a collector; on the other hand, the numbers of magazines in which this story or that made serial appearance may be ignored. In many cases I have stated where (if anywhere) novels were serialized, but such information is of general rather than of collecting interest, save to those whose catholicity of taste and house-room permit them the luxury of adding sets of magazines to those of actual books.

(iii) The terms used to-day to describe sizes in uncut books vary from those of an earlier period. For example, the terms “Post 8vo” and “12mo” are now rarely met with, whereas prior to 1880 they were in regular and common currency. Fearing that the modern buyer or seller of books would be puzzled by too frequent an encounter with technicalities virtually obsolete, I have expressed book sizes in terms familiar to present-day ears and as nearly equivalent to those replaced as makes no matter. The “8vo” book of the fifties is the “Demy 8vo” of the nineteen-twenties; “Post 8vo” has become “Extra Crown 8vo”; “12mo” has become “Foolscap 8vo.” The phraseology adopted, being familiar, will give an immediate general idea of a book's dimensions; the measurement in inches, given in brackets in all but a handful of cases, will supply to an eighth of an inch any further detail required.

(iv) The half-title is something of a bugbear to the collector of Victorians. Its absence may be fatal; its presence may give pause. As the nineteenth century progressed, methods of bookmaking became standardized; but during the first fifty years publishers printed to paper and their own convenience, regardless of uniformity even between volumes of the same work. For this reason no certainty exists as to the possession by any book of a half-title. Usually examination will show whether, in a book lacking a half-title, the first sheet should rightly provide one or no. The publisher who found his preliminary matter adequate, without half-title, for four or eight pages, let it go at that; if, however, he had two pages of his four or eight to spare, he used them for half-title and verso. Wherever in the notes that follow I have satisfied myself that an absence of half-title is correct, I have drawn attention to that absence; wherever nothing is said, the silence should be taken to signify that in perfect copies half-titles must appear.

(v) In the matter of binding it was the custom from about 1830 to 1850 to issue many books both in cloth and in paper boards. The old fashion for boards and labels died hard, and doubtless the trade found it paid to humour at once the enthusiast for the new cloth and the conservative lover of ancient ways. The collector who has the choice of a book either in cloth or in boards (with which must be understood boards, half-cloth[^[1]]) and lacks either inclination or money to buy the two should, if condition be equally good, buy the copy in boards. Such a copy may be of earlier but cannot be of later issue than one in cloth. Should the book be one of which the two styles were issued simultaneously the copies will rank equally, although even in such cases a board copy is preferable, seeing that probably fewer were published than of those in cloth, and certainly fewer have survived.

[1]. For convenience' sake the word “cloth” is used throughout these bibliographies to signify woven material used in binding. Technically, in the transition period between bound books and those fully bound, half-binding was carried out in “canvas,” cloth proper being of somewhat later date.

The phrase “boards (half-cloth) paper labels” is used in these bibliographies to describe books which may be found both in full-board and half-cloth styles. The colours of board and canvas vary greatly, as different tones were often used for books belonging to one edition.

(vi) It will be noticed that in the majority of cases I give the month as well as the year of a novel's publication. This, had it been possible, I would wish to have supplied throughout, for by its help alone can the vexed question of dated catalogues be properly determined. Unfortunately, with the disappearance in toto of many publishing firms, the absorption of others under new names, and the surprising lack of any complete files of lists and catalogues for the decades in question, it has been impossible in every case to fix the dates thus accurately. In determining the various issues of a first edition (for a publisher does not bind his whole printing at once, but in lots as required, and often at intervals of years), the date, if any, of the catalogues of publications generally bound at the end of Victorian novels is an essential factor. Where I give the month of publication in the pages that follow, there can be no difficulty in detecting copies bound up and issued after first publication. Elsewhere buyers can only be advised to compare the date of title-page with that of catalogue. If the latter predates or tallies with the former all may be well; if the catalogue date be later, the book is not a first issue, although still, so far as the sheets are concerned, a copy of the first edition. In a few rare cases, where numerous catalogues were printed during the same year, the earliest date found in any particular first edition of that year can be established only by experience. It is for this reason that identity of year between title-page and catalogue may rather than must indicate a true first issue.

(vii) Advice as to condition is easily given.

Never buy a rebound book or one of which the edges have been shaved.[^[2]]

[2]. In this, as always, generalization fails. The vast majority of the books here listed were first issued uncut; there are, however, a few—and those among the books of later date—that were published cut. The collector can identify these, if in original binding, by comparing measurement with that here given.

Be wary of books in cloth which bear no publisher's imprint on the spine; a few are right, but the majority are remainder-bound. Only in the very early days of cloth binding were spines unimprinted. Of course labelled books, whether in boards or half-cloth, never show publishers' imprint at the tail of their spines.

Always examine end-papers. The quality of Victorian end-papers cannot be obtained to-day, and it is rare that the substitution in one book of an old end-paper from another is so neatly done as to defy detection.

Library labels and their horrid traces have no place in a fine copy. If, however, a buyer inclines to accept ex-library copies pending better fortune, he should prefer those marked inside front covers to those of which the actual cloth is disfigured. Should the choice be between a copy in disfigured cloth and one of which the cloth is clean but the end-papers renewed to obliterate some previous damage, the wise buyer will take the first and leave the second. Better a dirty original than a book neat but doctored.

Do not reject an otherwise good copy of a book because the case is loose or the back-stitching perished. Such deterioration is easily and painlessly repaired.

In the case of books illustrated with etchings or steel engravings, compare the date often to be found on the plates with that on the title-page. These dates should tally, or, if they do not, thought or examination of prefatory matter should show the reason why.

Several cases exist of books reissued more than once, but without printed indication of reissue, in a style identical with that of the first edition. In such cases the plates, more often than not, bear their silent witness, and the careful buyer, momentarily uncertain of his dates, is saved the purchase of a book he does not want.

(viii) The volumes listed which I have not myself seen and examined are asterisked and thus expressly noted as catalogued without personal investigation. As may be imagined, some of the obscurer works of the authors dealt with are extremely rare, and all my seeking has failed to discover some of them. In every other case personal handling has preceded analysis, even although collation may already have existed in published form.

(ix) In conclusion I would appeal to any reader of my book who can emend, develop, or dispute the statements therein contained to send me forthwith his criticisms and suggestions. To work of this kind can be no finality. Freak copies, copies containing catalogues of earlier date, copies in earlier varieties of binding—of such things is the sport of bibliography composed. No individual can be sure that one particular issue of any book is the earliest; comparative certainty comes only from cooperation. Wherever possible I have compared several copies of the same book, but this was by no means everywhere. Consequently to look forward to revision and yet more revision is, in the circumstances, a matter for hope rather than one for shame.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Perhaps the most pleasant element in the compiling of this book has been the generosity and enthusiasm with which persons able to help have responded to inquiries.

Among those who have contributed of their private knowledge facts that but for them I could never have discovered, Mr. Richard Bentley must have first place. Unique as an authority on Victorian publishing, Mr. Bentley not only replied promptly and in detail to my importunate inquiries, but made suggestions and gave information—often at considerable personal trouble—which have greatly extended the scope and utility of my book.

Other publishers and editors were no less ready to give me access to such records of the past as were still in their keeping. To Mr. Arthur Waugh (of Messrs. Chapman and Hall), to Mr. Kelk and to Mr. Barnard (of Messrs. Longmans, Green), to Mr. Spalding (of Messrs. Chatto and Windus), to Mr. Herbert Virtue (of Messrs. Virtue and Co.), to Mr. Farquharson and to Mr. Leonard Huxley (of Messrs. John Murray), to Mr. Marston (of the “Publishers' Circular”), I tender my best thanks.

Gratitude must next be expressed to booksellers and owners of books whose contribution differed in kind but not in degree from that of the foregoing. Mr. Walter Spencer put his unrivalled stock of Victorian first editions wholly at my disposal, thus enabling me to examine many rare items not elsewhere discoverable. He also lent me a series of autograph letters from which certain details were obtainable. To Messrs. Bain and Messrs. Maggs I owe opportunities of seeing books necessary to my list. Mr. Hugh Walpole gave me access to his private collection, and Mr. Cecil Davis, Mr. J. A. Green, and Mr. Clement Shorter helped to a clearer understanding of the bibliography of Captain Marryat and of Mrs. Gaskell.

Further, I should like to set down my appreciation of the facilities afforded to me by the authorities of the British Museum and of the Bodleian Library. Their willingness to shorten in my favour the tedious process of extracting scattered volumes from their stores and vaults saved much fatigue and hours of valuable time.

To my mother, to my wife, and to one of my publishers I owe thanks for friendly collaboration at points where two heads and four hands had more than twice the value of half their number. Lastly, and perhaps mostly, I am indebted, for secretarial assistance and for help in the labour of research, to Miss Martha Smith, whose accuracy and devotion have halved my personal toil.

ANTHONY TROLLOPE
1815-1882

ANTHONY TROLLOPE[^[3]]

Trollope's novels, like those of Jane Austen, are of the very essence of fiction. Whatever they may lack in verbal subtlety, in passion, in tragedy or in comedy of idea, they never lack that spiritual skeleton without which no structure of a story-teller's imagining can survive. Palaces more delicate, more romantic, more brilliant and more terrible than those of Trollope have been erected and have stood to win the admiration of posterity; but their splendour and their beauty are due more to the solid material that upholds their walls and roofs than to the skill and fancy of their decoration. Other palaces, because they lacked such invisible but vital solidity, have drawn for an hour the fickle favour of the crowd and then toppled into dust. It is easy, in fiction, to create a nine days' wonder, but hard indeed to win the esteem of ninety years.

[3]. For his consent to the reprinting of this Essay I am grateful to the Editor of the “Nineteenth Century and After.”

Trollope has achieved that victory. Oblivion can now never be his, for he has lived his bad times and survived. As must any artist worth the name, he suffered eclipse—temporary, indeed, but so severe as at one time to threaten permanence. He was scorned as dowdy and parochial by the brilliant metropolitans of a succeeding generation. Only in the hearts of quiet folk and among readers uninstructed in the genius of their own time were his books remembered and cherished.

Until, slowly and slowly, opinion has begun to change. Quality has outstayed vogue, and the latter comes smirking back to the smiles of a lover yesterday despised. Indeed, Trollope is in a fair way to become once again the fashion. For a while he will be honoured by the enthusiasm of the intellectuals. Then, when they have turned their volatile benevolence to some other quarter, he will settle firmly in the respect of the critical. And that will at once be fame and his deserts.

Any summary analysis of Trollope's individual novels is wellnigh impossible, in view not only of the bulk of his work but also of its scope and richness of content. His quality is more intangible and at the same time more concentrated than that of the other writers treated in this book. “Of all the needs a book has, the chief need is that it be readable,” wrote Trollope himself. And again: “The primary object of a novelist is to please.” Readability has, in these latter days, become a term of condescension. But that is the fault of a superior age, and for the ten who use the word contemptuously there are ten thousand who, did they care to do so, would give it an older and a more honourable meaning. To them, as always to the large public of novel-readers, fiction, when it is not costume-romance, mystery-story, or topical propaganda, is a revelation of their own lives. It is this demand for an expression of emotions in which the normal reader can share that Trollope so amazingly satisfies. No précis of plot, no indication of social setting, of character types, nor of period, can in his case convey the essence of any particular novel.

Nevertheless his stories fall into certain specific categories, some of which form actual series of tales with characters reappearing from volume to volume, while others, although severally independent and self-contained, may be classified as belonging to one type of fiction or to another.

The best known group of novels is that dealing with the society of the city of Barchester and of the surrounding neighbourhood. The Chronicles of Barsetshire, as they have been called, are six in number:

The Warden (1855),

Barchester Towers (1857),

Doctor Thorne (1858),

Framley Parsonage (1861),

The Small House at Allington (1864), and

The Last Chronicle of Barset (1867).

Although these famous stories undoubtedly contain much of Trollope's best work, they do not contain the whole of it. It is a mistake to suppose that they rank altogether higher than his other books, and one of the most disastrous results of the disfavour into which his novels fell after their author's death is that a wealth of really first-rate material, just because it is included in books of which the late eighties chose to forget the titles, lies hidden to-day and withdrawn from the enjoyment of modern readers.

Cases of such unmerited neglect are encountered immediately and among the novels of Trollope's second continuous and interconnected series. The “political” stories, like those of Barsetshire, are six in number:

Can You Forgive Her? (1864),

Phineas Finn (1869),

The Eustace Diamonds (1873),

Phineas Redux (1874),

The Prime Minister (1876), and

The Duke's Children (1880).

It is truly remarkable to what an extent these admirable tales have fallen into oblivion. Not only do they introduce many of Trollope's most masterly characters, but they present, vividly and with knowledge, the minds and manners of the political aristocracy, the social hangers-on, the Tadpoles and Tapers of the day. Speaking generally, the social setting of the political novels is different from that of The Chronicles of Barsetshire. Indeed, it could hardly be otherwise, seeing that the whole series takes its tone from the personalities of Plantagenet Palliser and his wife Lady Glencora, who, as the stories progress and by natural course of inheritance, become the Duke and Duchess of Omnium and the greatest of English nobility. Trollope's method is not slavishly to serialize the life story of any individual character or pair of characters. All the political novels have their own clearly defined plot. They are, however, all tinged with the compelling personalities of Lady Glencora and her husband, into which Trollope threw all that he had of art and enthusiasm.

Can You Forgive Her? is a long novel, concerned primarily with the troubles of a motherless girl who breaks an engagement with an oppressively upright man in order to return to a youthful love affair with a dissipated and unscrupulous cousin. Mr. Grey, the honourable man, gets in the end the wife he wants; but Trollope does not hesitate to show fairly the preference of a high-spirited girl for an adventurous rascal, and there will be many who, when the book is finished, will regret—a little ashamedly—that virtue has ultimately triumphed. In the life story of Lady Glencora Can You Forgive Her? is important, for it pictures her newly married and literally on the verge of running away from her shy, proud, inarticulate husband, with a beautiful young reprobate, whose previous intimacy with her the reader may imagine at his discretion. The fallibility of Lady Glencora is skilfully contrasted with that of Alice Vavasor, the heroine of the book; their circumstances are so similar, and yet the young women react to them so differently!

Phineas Finn is a tale of political ambition. The hero, by whose name the book is called, is a poor Irishman who comes to seek his fortune in Parliament. The ups and downs of his career; Lady Laura Kennedy, who loves him but from family pressure marries millions; Madame Max Goesler, the fascinating, mysterious widow who rejects flattering if dubious proposals from the old Duke of Omnium, combine with a mass of other material to make a really dramatic story that is continued, and equally well continued, in Phineas Redux.

Not the least remarkable feature of the second of these two books is the hero's trial for murder. Trollope has a genius for trial scenes, and to my mind it is an open question whether that in Phineas Redux is not finer than its more celebrated predecessors in The Three Clerks and in Orley Farm.

The Eustace Diamonds turns on the personality of Lizzie Eustace, a selfish but attractive little woman who keeps possession, in the teeth of lawyers and of her late husband's relations, of certain priceless jewels to which she has no right whatever. There are two or three subplots in the story, all of good quality; but the character of Lizzie Eustace, who, for all her lying and her insincerity and her cheap smartness, is seductive and appealing, stands out as the book's essential achievement.

The Prime Minister and The Duke's Children are the only two novels of the political series in which Plantagenet Palliser, now Duke of Omnium, is admittedly the central figure. The former book is so constructed as to give prominence to the love affair and unhappy marriage of Emily Wharton with Ferdinand Lopez, a stock gambler and commercial adventurer. But although the history of the Lopez ménage is admirably told, and gives scope for the reintroduction of Lizzie Eustace, as well as other strange and disreputable people, the story of the first premiership of the Duke of Omnium is the real story of the book. By the time he came to the writing of The Prime Minister, Trollope had become deeply interested in presenting in the person of the Duke his ideal conception of an English aristocrat. No praise can be too high for the skill with which he implies, but does not describe, the divergent qualities of ambition possessed by the Duke and by his wife. Throughout the book she is for ever striving to make him in the eye of the world the greatest gentleman of the greatest kingdom of all time. He, on the other hand, sees in his position only duty and responsibility and disappointment. Not the least of his troubles are his wife's insistence that the life of a public man is never private, and her expressed conviction that give and take is the essence of political compromise and therefore of premiership.

In the interval between The Prime Minister and The Duke's Children the Duchess of Omnium dies. The unhappy Duke is left to find, if he may, in the achievements of his children that completeness and success to secure which he feels that he has himself so utterly failed. Everything goes awry. His only daughter gives her love to an unknown and penniless commoner. His younger son, after ragging through his university career, resorts disastrously to cards and racing. Finally, his heir—Lord Silverbridge—stands for Parliament in the opposite interest to that of his father, and, worse still, turns from the girl the Duke has chosen as his bride, in order to throw his title and prospects at the feet of the beautiful daughter of an American savant. The Duke struggles against his own humanity; slowly and unhappily, as is his way, he adjusts himself to the changing times; at the last he sacrifices his ideals of nobility to personal affection. The Duke's Children worthily closes a series of fine novels. In some ways this last story of the political group is the best, and it speaks a good deal for the author's power of sustained imagination that he contrived, over a period of sixteen years, to maintain the interest and develop the vitality of so complex a collection of characters.

The rough classifications of novels in themselves independent may, out of respect for chronology, begin with the stories of Irish life. The Macdermotts of Ballycloran (1847), The Kellys and the O'Kellys (1848), Castle Richmond (1860) and The Landleaguers (1883), are the four books which belong, properly speaking, to this category. Of course there are Irish scenes in many other novels, for Trollope lived for years in Ireland, knew it well and loved it, and was for ever introducing Irishmen and Irish incidents into his work. The books above mentioned are, however, wholly and deliberately novels about Ireland. The first two have the faults of very early work, in that they are prolix and lack that control of character and material that marks the experienced novelist. Both, however, are worth reading, and the plot of The Kellys needs no excuse on the score of inexperience. Castle Richmond, however, is definitely an unsuccessful book. It is packed with information about the Irish famine, and the story is over-melodramatic for Trollope's method. One of his most characteristic qualities as a novelist is his refusal to keep the reader in suspense. In direct contrast to Wilkie Collins, he goes out of his way to explain, as he comes to it, each seemingly inexplicable event. It is as though he scorns to save himself the trouble of characterization by erecting between himself and the reader a screen of mystery. For this reason, the secret power exercised by the unsavoury Molletts over Sir Thomas Fitzgerald is, because it soon ceases to be secret, a weak foundation upon which to erect a story. The Landleaguers, the book left unfinished by Trollope when he died, is concerned to present the social condition of Ireland in the early eighties, as was Castle Richmond to depict that of the famine-ridden forties. And yet what a difference! In The Landleaguers the novelist presents his picture of politics in his actual story. There are no passages of blue-book instructionalism, but it is doubtful whether a more vivid impression of the state of Ireland at the time can be obtained from any other source. Even if there were no others among Trollope's old-age novels to disprove the theory, The Landleaguers alone should put an end to the contention that toward the end of his life he had lost his cunning or written himself out.

It is now necessary to examine that large and heterogeneous collection of novels which, from one point of view or another, satirize contemporary life or present some definite aspect of the English social scene. Let me once more insist that the classification of Trollope's books here attempted should not be understood too literally. All the Barchester novels, all the political novels, are in one sense wholly presentments of society; in the same way many of them contain passages definitely satirical. But they have other claims to special grouping which the numerous isolated stories now to be considered do not possess; and, while satire is mainly incidental to the tales of Barchester and to those of political life, it is in some at least of Trollope's other books the principal purpose of the story.

First, then, the books which may fairly be termed books of social satire. The earliest in date is The Bertrams, which, although the situations and characters are of the kind which Trollope was to make essentially his own, is a failure even more complete than Castle Richmond. The central theme is one to which the author more than once returns. Caroline Waddington rejects George Bertram for reasons of income and prospects. She marries his successful lawyer friend, only to find that she has sold herself to a greedy tyrant. The parallel case of Julia Brabazon and Harry Clavering immediately suggests itself; but where in The Claverings Trollope achieves an intense humanity, in The Bertrams he is dully mechanical. He allows the subsidiary plots to disturb and obscure his main story. When, as frequently, he attempts the comic in social enjoyment he comes clumsily to grief. The widow's seaside picnic in Can you Forgive Her? has only to be contrasted with the excursion from Jerusalem described in The Bertrams to make clear the difference between successful and unsuccessful satire. And yet there are points in The Bertrams. The close-fisted old man, the disposal of whose money provides the motive of most of the incident, is drawn with consistent restraint. There are touches in the description of society at Littlebath that prepare the reader for the pleasure of Miss Mackenzie. On the whole the book should be read. It is Trollope “off” (or rather “not yet on to”) his game, but it was published at an important moment in his career and helps to make clear his subsequent development.

Rachel Ray (1863) and Miss Mackenzie (1865) may, without any critical licence, be considered together. Both are bitter satires on Evangelical Christianity. Trollope inherited from his mother a hatred of the brimstone school of religious teachers, and in these novels he lets himself go with considerable effect. The earlier of the two books contains comparatively few characters, and those of modest social position. Rachel herself is delightful and gives to the book, despite its obvious weaknesses of construction, a freshness and charm that is very pleasing. Mrs. Prime and her horrible clerical admirer are frankly caricature, but that they should be so is not unnatural, seeing that they represent the very puritanism that the book is intended to attack.

In Miss Mackenzie we are given the story of a spinster of thirty-five, to whom unexpectedly a small fortune is bequeathed. She becomes immediately the quarry of fortune hunters—shabby social, religious, and commercial. Some of the best scenes in the story are staged in Littlebath, where Miss Todd and Miss Baker (who help to retrieve The Bertrams from disaster) make welcome reappearance. As satire the novel is more dexterous than Rachel Ray, but it lacks the attraction of a real Trollope heroine, and throughout has a faint tinge of the sordid. It is interesting to note on page 242 of the second volume a mention of Lady Glencora Palliser, whom Trollope had 'presented' in Can you Forgive Her?

Not until 1875 did Trollope publish another definitely satirical novel. When he did so, the event marked an important stage in his evolution as a novelist. Critics had begun to grumble at comedies of manners, which spoke of the suavity of yesterday rather than of the competitive hustle of to-day. England was moving step by step along the road to commercialism. Trollope, with his county and clerical families, his political aristocrats and comic tuft-hunters, was shrugged aside as out of date. Such treatment was intolerable, and, with a gesture half impatient, half appealing, he sent out into the world The Way We Live Now. This long and crowded novel—perhaps, with the exception of The Last Chronicle of Barset, the most abundant of all his books—presents, in the person of Mr. Melmotte, the financial magnate of alien origin proper to a truly modern story of English life. Whether the cavillers, whose complaints spurred Trollope to so violent an effort, admitted, after reading The Way We Live Now, that the old dog could in truth out-modern the best of them, history does not relate; but undeniably this book, in which he asserted his vitality and showed that in the matter of satiric observation he was well abreast of the times, has no lack of vigour or luxuriant invention.

That Mr. Scarborough's Family (1883) may reasonably be said to conclude the list of Trollope's satirical novels is perhaps disputable. And yet, because its power is mainly ironic, I prefer to mention it here rather than treat of it as a purely social story. A while ago one example was quoted of a first-rate book from Trollope's last period. Mr. Scarborough's Family is another.

An aged and wealthy cynic suddenly (and, as it turns out, with deliberate falsehood) makes public the illegitimacy of his eldest son. With the complications of inheritance, with the changing relations between old Mr. Scarborough and his two sons, of whom the elder is now destitute and the latter coldly triumphant in his unexpected good fortune, is involved an elaborate second plot, centring round the love story of an amiable young man, whose fortunes depend on the favour of a peevish and eccentric uncle. Analysis of a tale so full of happening and character is impossible in a few lines. Sufficient to say that Mr. Scarborough's Family, were it not for the date on its title-page, might be thought to belong to a much earlier period, not only of Trollope, but of fiction as a whole, to a period more lavish than subtle, more genial and full-blooded than detached and sensitive.

With The Three Clerks (1858) opens the chronology of those novels which, although partially satirical, are in the main straightforward stories of English cultivated life. The Three Clerks is one of the few Trollope novels that has been seriously overrated. In its pages Mr. Chaffanbrass, the notorious Old Bailey lawyer, makes his first appearance, but he is infinitely more effective in Orley Farm and in Phineas Finn than at his first entrance on the Trollope stage. In so far as The Three Clerks gives a picture of the Civil Service that the author himself knew, it has documentary value, but as fiction it is formless and flaccid. Its young women are wholly devoid of that freshness and frankness that place Trollope, as a creator of femininity, apart from all other novelists of his generation; its menfolk are either riotous dummies like those in Smedley's novels, or prigs and villains, compounded so slavishly by recipe as to have little meaning beyond that of the conventional types they represent.

Of Orley Farm (1862) it is unnecessary to speak, the novel being one of the two or three outside the Barchester series which are still read to-day. The Belton Estate (1866), on the other hand, badly needs rehabilitation. Henry James, in a review written when quite a young man, concluded a long paragraph of hostile criticism with the words: “The Belton Estate is a stupid book.” One may venture that the obtuseness was not all on one side. Using a cast of four principal and as few subsidiary characters, Trollope fills three good volumes with the matrimonial dilemma of Clara Amedroz, who has to choose between the uncouth, well-to-do farmer to whom passes her thriftless father's estate, and the polished, self-seeking Captain Aylmer—in parlance, though not in fact, also her cousin—who offers her marriage because at the deathbed of his rich aunt and as part condition of becoming her heir he swore to do so. The Belton Estate has, to a greater degree than any other of Trollope's books, that art of concealing art which delights one type of mind, but by another is dismissed as “stupid.” In a sense it is the most difficult to appreciate of all the important novels, and, were an examination in Trollope a thing of practical import, the examining board would be wise to make this book the test question of their paper.

The Claverings (1867) and He Knew He Was Right (1869) are very long books, each of which turns on a theme highly characteristic of the author. Mention has already been made of Julia Brabazon, heroine of the former book, who jilts the nobody she loves for a rich invalid peer. The price she has to pay is counted in full in the pages of The Claverings, which also introduce a number of excellent characters, from Sir Hugh Clavering, hard, savage, and selfish, to Sophie Gordeloup and her scoundrelly brother, who play so desperately for the wealth and person of Lord Ongar's lonely and embittered widow. He Knew He Was Right describes the steady growth in a husband's mind of unjust suspicion of his wife's fidelity. As a crescendo of hysterical mistrust, the book is a fine piece of sustained writing. As a novel, it would be gloomy and distressing but for an admirable and humorous by-plot laid in cathedral Exeter. It would, perhaps, be hypercritical and unappreciative of his adroit handling of incident to blame the author for the very liberal use of coincidence with which he aids the progress of his story.

Of the six social novels that remain, one is first-rate, three are very good second-rate, one is ordinary second-rate and the last frankly bad. Is He Popenjoy? (1878) may rank with The Claverings as a book undeservedly excluded from the upper room of every Trollope-lover's mind. The Dean of Brotherton, son of a jobmaster, father of the heroine and ultimately grandfather of a marquis, is a Trollope dignitary of the first water. His daughter is as eminent in the world of heroines as is her father in that of ecclesiastics. She is gay, loving, whimsical, courageous, and always natural. Her dour husband with his excessive sense of duty and inadequate sense of humour; her aristocratic sisters-in-law, shrouding in ill-nature and good works the emptiness of their lives and purses; the society siren; the society matchmaker; and perhaps above all the ill-tempered, dissolute marquis, on the legitimacy of whose son turns the whole mechanism of the story, are each one of them fictional characters that only a master could create.

Ralph The Heir (1871)—the plot of which was pirated by Charles Reade and dramatized under the title Shilly Shally—contains some good characters and perhaps the best parliamentary election of all those contrived by its author. The troubles and difficulties of the shy, ineffective Sir Thomas Underwood, and the determination of Mr. Neefit, the breeches-maker, to buy up a bankrupt young squire as husband for his daughter would give distinction to any story. Lady Anna (1874) is a delicate elaboration of Trollope's favourite motif—projected or (as in this case) actual misalliance. The American Senator (1877) contains some excellent hunting and much good general observation. Ayala's Angel (1881), like The Belton Estate but less pronouncedly, is a book that must be read to be realized, for it is quiet Trollope and a thing of shades rather than one of definite, contrasted colours.

There remains Marion Fay (1882), once again a tale of misalliance. This is undeniably the worst book that its author ever wrote. Everywhere but here he contrives to keep either his hero or his heroine (and more frequently both) sympathetic, sensible, and convincingly normal; but in Marion Fay he sinks to mawkishness and to a deathbed scene that is frankly inexcusable.

Plenty of novels still remain of this astonishing and untiring writer. They may, however, be somewhat summarily dismissed. The most interesting group is that of the short, single-theme stories which succeeded the publication of The Way We Live Now. It is not unreasonable to attribute to the mood of challenge in which that novel was sent out the noticeable change in the author's method during the years that followed. It is as though he had determined to try his hand at the psychological analysis which was just coming into fashion among novelists. And so we are given in quick succession six little books, each written round a single event or describing the reactions of one individual to a definite set of circumstances. The titles are as follow:

An Eye for An Eye (1879),

Cousin Henry (1879),

Doctor Wortle's School (1881),

The Fixed Period (1882),

Kept in the Dark (1882),

An Old Man's Love (1884).

It so happened that An Eye for An Eye was written before the publication of The Way We Live Now, although not published until some while after. It is, however, clearly the product (if an unconscious one) of the same impulse as gave birth to the other books, and its theme—the struggle in the mind of a young Englishman between pride of family and desire to fulfil a marriage promise to a girl who has become his mistress—is a theme of the type peculiar to these six brief stories and distinctly foreign to Trollope's more bulky and eventful work.

A further group of five stories may roughly be termed Trollope's “oversea” novels. The first three—Nina Balatka (1867), Linda Tressel (1868), and The Golden Lion of Granpere (1872)—were written more or less intentionally to form a distinct trio. They are semi-romantic tales, staged respectively in old Prague, in old Nürnberg, and among the Vosges mountains; pleasant enough, but quite definitely of minor importance. The first two were published anonymously but achieved little success, and were later reissued over the author's name. Harry Heathcote of Gangoil (1874) and John Caldigate (1879) are novels of Australia, based on the knowledge of that continent which the author gained when visiting one of his sons who had established himself there. I understand that as pictures of Australian life they are vivid and reliable. Be that as it may, the untutored reader, seeking only for Trollope, will find him abundantly in Harry Heathcote, which is an eventful, almost an adventurous story, and to a very satisfying degree in the longer book that appeared five years later.

Of Trollope's various volumes of short stories nothing need here be said. Of Sir Harry Hotspur of Humblethwaite (1871) there is little that can be said. Of The Struggles of Brown, Jones, and Robinson (1870) there is much that had better be left unsaid. One important full-length novel remains, good in itself and at the same time remarkable as the only one of the author's tales in which he arms himself formally as a social crusader.

The Vicar of Bullhampton (1870) is a novel written in defence of the “fallen woman.” It is quaint to read Trollope's solemn and tactful preface, in which he almost apologizes to his public for venturing on such indelicate ground. Fortunately the book is so feeble as propaganda that, but for the preface, one would be unaware that it was written with any special purpose. It can be enjoyed as a good story of village life, with a delightful parson as central figure and the necessary complement of charming Trollope ladies, gruff farmers, lonely landowners, and aggressive Nonconformity.

This novel, like all Trollope's really good work, impresses the reader first and foremost with its Englishry. Perhaps it would not be too much to say that the very greatness of the author himself springs from this same quality. He is intensely English, with the quiet humour, the shy sympathy masquerading as indifference, the delicate sense of kindliness and toleration, the occasional heaviness, the occasional irritability, that mark a man or a book as English. But if to these qualities he owes his place in our proud heritage of literature, to them also he owes the tarrying of due recognition, for they and the natures that possess them are of all qualities and of all natures the most difficult to impress upon the sceptical outsider, seeing that their very beauty and preciousness and power lie in their elusiveness.

BIOGRAPHY

ANTHONY TROLLOPE: His Work, Associates and Literary Originals. By T. H. S. Escott. London: John Lane, 1913.

This book will be of interest to the general reader, although it is rather overloaded with analyses of novel-plots and the arrangement is not ideal.

By far the most valuable feature of the volume is the bibliography of Trollope by Margaret Lavington included at the end. For the help this careful and documented compilation has given me I wish to make acknowledgment, although I have throughout worked independently and from original sources and taken none of the facts hereafter given without verification. Miss Lavington's descriptions lack certain details essential to the collector, she makes one or two actual mistakes, but, within the limits she has laid down for herself, her work is wonderfully complete and accurate.

I.—EDITIONES PRINCIPES
FICTION, BIOGRAPHY, TRAVEL-BOOKS, ESSAYS, ETC.

1847

THE MACDERMOTTS OF BALLYCLORAN. By Mr. A. Trollope. London: Thomas Cautley Newby, Publisher, 72 Mortimer Street, Cavendish Square. 1847. 3 vols. Ex. Cr. 8vo (4¾ × 7¾).

Vol. I. pp. (ii) + 345 + (1).

Vol. II. pp. (ii) + 382.

Vol. III. pp. (ii) + 437 + (1).

No half-titles. Boards, half-cloth, paper label. White end-papers. Also in dark brown cloth, gilt, blocked in blind. Pale yellow end-papers.

Note—On the title-page of Vol. III. “Mortimer” should be spelt “Morimer.” In the same volume, p. 437 is mis-paged “743.” Copies of the first edition were reissued in 1848 with title-pages so dated and differently worded, but with no indication of reprint. On this second title-page the misprint is corrected. The wording is as follows:

THE MACDERMOTTS OF BALLYCLORAN: A Historical Romance. By A. Trollope, Esq., author of The Kellys and the O'Kellys. London: T. C. Newby, 72 Mortimer Street, Cavendish Square. 1848.

1848

THE KELLYS AND THE O'KELLYS: Or Landlords and Tenants. A Tale of Irish Life. By A. Trollope, Esq. London: Henry Colburn, Publisher, Great Marlborough Street. 1848. 3 vols. Ex. Cr. 8vo (4⅞ × 7⅞).

Vol. I. pp. (ii) + 298.

Vol. II. pp. (ii) + 298.

Vol. III. pp. (ii) + 285 + (1). Publisher's catalogue, 24 pp., undated, bound in at end.

No half-titles. Paper boards (half-cloth), paper label. White end-papers.

Note—This book was published in July, 1848.

1850

LA VENDÉE: An Historical Romance. By Anthony Trollope, Esq. London: Henry Colburn, Publisher, Great Marlborough Street. 1850. 3 vols. Ex. Cr. 8vo (4⅞ × 7⅞).

Vol. I. pp. (iv) + 320.

Vol. II. pp. (iv) + 330.

Vol. III. pp. (ii) + 313 + (1). No half-title to this volume. Publisher's advertisement occupies p. (314). Publisher's catalogue, 16 pp., undated, bound in at end.

Paper boards, paper label. White end-papers.

Note—This book was published in June, 1850.

1855

THE WARDEN. By Anthony Trollope. London: Longman, Brown, Green and Longmans. 1855. 1 vol. Ex. Cr. 8vo. (4¾ × 7¾). Pp. iv + 336. No half-title. Publishers' catalogue, 24 pp., dated September, 1854, bound in at end. Pale brown cloth, gilt, blocked in blind. Brick-red end-papers printed on inside front and inside back covers with publishers' advertisements.

Notes—(i) This book was published in January, 1855. An edition of 1,000 copies was printed, of which 600 were sold during the first eighteen months of publication. The balance of 400 was bound, very nearly uniform with the first issue, in 1858 and a catalogue dated with that year inserted at end.

(ii) In 1879 Chapman and Hall published, under the series title Chronicles of Barsetshire, Trollope's novels dealing with the city and district of Barchester. The Warden was the first volume of this reissue, and was preceded by a brief introduction by Trollope not previously published.

1857

BARCHESTER TOWERS. By Anthony Trollope, author of The Warden. London: Longman, Brown, Green, Longmans and Roberts. 1857. 3 vols. Ex. Cr. 8vo (4¾ × 7¾).

Vol. I. pp. viii + 305 + (3). Publishers' advertisements occupy pp. (307) and (308). Advertisement of The Warden occupies p. (ii). Half-title to this volume.

Vol. II. pp. iv + 299 + (1). No half-title.

Vol. III. pp. iv + 321 + (3). No half-title. Publishers' advertisements occupy pp. (323) and (324).

Pale brown cloth, gilt, blocked in blind. Brick-red end-papers printed with publishers' advertisements.

Note—This book was published in May, 1857. The earliest issue had end-papers of a much redder brown than those used for later bindings of the first edition sheets. The latter can also be identified by the date of a publishers' catalogue bound in at the end of Vol. I.

1858

THE THREE CLERKS: A Novel. By Anthony Trollope, author of Barchester Towers etc. London: Richard Bentley, New Burlington Street. 1858. 3 vols. Ex. Cr. 8vo (4¾ × 7¾).

Vol. I. pp. iv + 340.

Vol. II. pp. iv + 322 + (2).

Vol. III. pp. iv + 334 + (2).

No half-titles. Paper boards, half cloth, paper label. White end-papers. Also in dark grey-purple watered cloth, gilt, blocked in blind, with yellow end-papers.

Notes—(i) Although dated 1858, this book was actually published in December, 1857.

(ii) I have seen a copy of this book in a binding of the grey-purple cloth above mentioned, but with paper labels as employed on the half-cloth edition.

1858

DOCTOR THORNE: A Novel. By Anthony Trollope, author of The Three Clerks, Barchester Towers etc. London: Chapman and Hall, 193 Piccadilly. 1858. 3 vols. Ex. Cr. 8vo (4¾ × 7¾).

Vol. I. pp. iv + 305 + (3). Publishers' catalogue, 32 pp., dated April, 1858, bound in at end.

Vol. II. pp. iv + 323 + (1).

Vol. III. pp. iv + 340.

No half-titles. Dark grey-purple cloth, gilt, blocked in blind. Pale green end-papers.

Note—This book was published in June, 1858.

1859

THE BERTRAMS: A Novel. By Anthony Trollope, author of Barchester Towers, Doctor Thorne etc. London: Chapman and Hall, 193 Piccadilly. 1859. 3 vols. Ex. Cr. 8vo (4¾ × 7¾).

Vol. I. pp. iv + 335 + (1).

Vol. II. pp. iv + 344.

Vol. III. pp. iv + 331 + (1).

No half-titles. Dark grey-purple cloth, gilt, blocked in blind. Pale yellow end-papers.

Note—This novel was published in March, 1859.

1859

THE WEST INDIES AND THE SPANISH MAIN. By Anthony Trollope, author of Barchester Towers, Doctor Thorne, The Bertrams etc. London: Chapman and Hall, 193 Piccadilly. 1859. 1 vol. Demy 8vo (5½ × 8¾). Pp. iv + 395 + (1). Publishers' catalogue, 32 pp., dated November, 1859, bound in at end. No half-title. Coloured map printed separately facing title. Maroon cloth, gilt, blocked in blind. Pale yellow end-papers.

Notes—(i) This book was published in October, 1859.

(ii) It is possible that the earliest copies of all contained no publishers' catalogue, but I have been unable to find a copy with a catalogue dated earlier than that mentioned above.

1860

CASTLE RICHMOND: A Novel. By Anthony Trollope, author of Barchester Towers, Doctor Thorne, The West Indies and the Spanish Main etc. London: Chapman and Hall, 193 Piccadilly. 1860. 3 vols. Ex. Cr. 8vo (4¾ × 7¾).

Vol. I. pp. vi + 303 + (1).

Vol. II. pp. (vi) [p. vi is erroneously numbered iv] + 300.

Vol. III. pp. vi + 289 + (1). Publishers' catalogue, 32 pp., dated May, 1860, bound in at end.

Dark grey-purple cloth, gilt, blocked in blind. Yellow end-papers.

Note—This book was published in May, 1860.

1861

FRAMLEY PARSONAGE. By Anthony Trollope, author of Barchester Towers etc. etc. With 6 illustrations by J. E. Millais, R.A. London: Smith Elder and Co., 65 Cornhill. MDCCCLXI. 3 vols. Ex. Cr. 8vo (4⅞ × 7⅝).

Vol. I. pp. (iv) + 333 + (3).

Vol. II. pp. (iv) + 318 + (2).

Vol. III. pp. (iv) + 330 + (2). Publishers' catalogue, 14 pp., dated April, 1861, bound in at end.

No half-titles. Each volume contains two line-engraved illustrations printed separately. Grey-purple cloth, blocked in gold and blind. Yellow end-papers.

Note—This book was published in May, 1861. The story appeared serially in the “Cornhill.”

1861

TALES OF ALL COUNTRIES. By Anthony Trollope, author of Barchester Towers, Doctor Thorne, The West Indies and the Spanish Main. London: Chapman and Hall, 193 Piccadilly. 1861. 1 vol. Ex. Cr. 8vo (4¾ × 7¾). Pp. (iv) + 312. Publishers' catalogue, 32 pp., dated November, 1861, bound in at end. No half-title. Blue embossed cloth, gilt, blocked in blind. Bright blue end-papers.

Contents: La Mère Bauche—The O'Conors of Castle Conor—John Bull on the Guadalquivir—Miss Sarah Jack, of Spanish Town, Jamaica—The Courtship of Susan Bell—Relics of General Chassé—An Unprotected Female at the Pyramids—The Château of Prince Polignac.

Note—This book was published in November, 1861.

1862

ORLEY FARM. By Anthony Trollope, author of Doctor Thorne, Barchester Towers, Framley Parsonage etc. With illustrations by J. E. Millais. London: Chapman and Hall, 193 Piccadilly. 1862. 2 vols. Demy 8vo (5½ × 8¾).

Vol. I. pp. viii + 320. Publishers' catalogue, 32 pp., dated October, 1861, bound in at end.

Vol. II. pp. viii + 320.

Each volume contains twenty illustrations. Brown-purple embossed cloth, blocked in gold and blind. Pale yellow end-papers.

This story originally appeared in twenty demy 8vo one shilling parts, dated March (1861) to October (1862), bound in fawn wrappers printed in blue and red, and containing the illustrations by J. E. Millais afterwards included in the two-volume edition. Each part contains two illustrations.

Note—The first volume of this novel was published in book form on December 3, 1861; the second volume on September 25, 1862. Both title-pages are, however, dated 1862.

ORLEY FARM: Part Issue.

The following advertisement pages, etc., should be found in a complete set. The advertisements at the front of each number are headed: “Orley Farm Advertiser.” All wrappers except front covers are printed with advertisements.

Part I: Front—16 pp., dated March, 1861. Back—10 pp., unnumbered, of which the first two on pink paper.

Part II: Front—8 pp., dated 1861. Back—4 pp., unnumbered, of which the first two on yellow paper.

Part III: Front—8 pp., dated May, 1861. Back—2 pp., unnumbered, on lilac paper.

Part IV: Front—8 pp., dated June, 1861. Back—2 pp., unnumbered, on pale yellow paper.

Part V: Front—8 pp., dated July, 1861. Back—4 pp., unnumbered, of which the first two on lilac paper.

Part VI: Front—Inset slip of yellow paper advertising the serialization in “Great Expectations” of A Strange Story, by Lytton. 8 pp., dated August, 1861. Back—6 pp., unnumbered, of which the first two on yellow paper, the third in coloured lithograph, the fifth and sixth on pink (or green) paper, the fifth being blank and a sample of cambric frilling being attached to the sixth.

Part VII: Front—8 pp., dated September, 1861. Back—4 pp., unnumbered, of which the first printed in colours, and the last two a foolscap 8vo leaflet on blue paper advertising “The Queen.”

Part VIII: Front—8 pp., dated October, 1861. Back—2 pp., unnumbered, on pale yellow paper.

Part IX: Front—8 pp., dated November, 1861. Back—nil.

Part X: Front—8 pp., dated December, 1861. Back—2 pp., unnumbered, on yellow paper. [Note—This part contains half-title, title, contents and list of illustrations (in all 8 pp.) to Volume I.]

Part XI: Front—8 pp., dated January, 1862. Back—12 pp., unnumbered.

Part XII: Front—8 pp., dated February, 1862. Back—2 pp., unnumbered, on pale yellow paper.

Part XIII: Front—Inset slip of yellow paper advertising the serialization in “All the Year Round” of No Name, by Wilkie Collins. 8 pp., dated March, 1862. Back—4 pp.

Part XIV: Front—8 pp., dated April, 1862. Back—8 pp., of which the first two (unnumbered) are on blue paper, the next four are numbered, and the last two unnumbered.

Part XV: Front—8 pp., dated May, 1862. Back—12 pp., of which 1-4 unnumbered and the rest a publishers' catalogue paged (1) to 8 and dated April 25, 1862.

Part XVI: Front—8 pp., dated June, 1862. Back—10 pp., of which the first two (unnumbered) are on yellow paper and the remainder are a publishers' catalogue paged (1)-8 and dated April 25, 1862.

Part XVII: Front—8 pp., dated July, 1862. Back—4 pp.

Part XVIII: Front—8 pp., dated August, 1862. Back—6 pp., unnumbered, of which the first two on green paper.

Part XIX: Front—8 pp., dated September, 1862. Back—4 pp.

Part XX: Front—8 pp., dated October, 1862. Back—12 pp., of which the first two unnumbered and on orange paper, the next two unnumbered, and the remainder a publishers' catalogue paged (1)-8 and dated September 24, 1862. [Note—This part contains half-title, title, contents and list of illustrations (in all 8 pp.) to Volume II.]

1862

NORTH AMERICA. By Anthony Trollope, author of The West Indies and the Spanish Main, Doctor Thorne, Orley Farm etc. London: Chapman and Hall, 193 Piccadilly. 1862. 2 vols. Demy 8vo (5½ × 8¾).

Vol. I. pp. viii + 467 + (1). Publishers' catalogue, 32 pp., dated May, 1862, bound in at end.

Vol. II. pp. viii + 494 +(2).

In Vol. I. a folding map is inserted facing p. 1. Maroon embossed cloth, gilt, blocked in blind. Chocolate end-papers.

Note—This book was published in May, 1862.

1863

TALES OF ALL COUNTRIES: Second Series. By Anthony Trollope. London: Chapman and Hall, 193 Piccadilly. 1863. 1 vol. Ex. Cr. 8vo (4¾ × 7¾). Pp. (iv) + 371 + (1). No half-title. Blue embossed cloth, gilt, blocked in blind. Uniform with Tales of All Countries: First Series. Pale yellow end-papers.

Contents: Aaron Trow—Mrs. General Talboys—The Parson's Daughter of Oxney Colne—George Walker at Suez—The Mistletoe Bough—Returning Home—A Ride Across Palestine—The House of Heine Brothers in Munich—The Man Who Kept His Money in a Box.

Note—This book was published in February, 1863.

1863

RACHEL RAY: A Novel. By Anthony Trollope, author of Barchester Towers, Castle Richmond, Orley Farm etc. London: Chapman and Hall, 193 Piccadilly. 1863. 2 vols. Ex. Cr. 8vo (4¾ × 7¾).

Vol. I. pp. iv + 319 + (1).

Vol. II. pp. iv + 310 + (2).

No half-titles. Maroon cloth, gilt, blocked in blind. Cream end-papers.

Note—This book was published in October, 1863.

1864

THE SMALL HOUSE AT ALLINGTON. By Anthony Trollope. With 18 illustrations by J. E. Millais, R.A. London: Smith Elder and Co., 65 Cornhill. MDCCCLXIV. 2 vols. Demy 8vo (5½ × 8⅝).

Vol. I. pp. (iv) + 312.

Vol. II. pp. (iv) + 316.

No half-titles. Vol. I. contains ten illustrations, and Vol. II. eight illustrations. Green embossed cloth, blocked in gold and blind. Chocolate end-papers, printed with publishers' advertisements.

Note—This book was published in March, 1864, and completed its serial run in the “Cornhill” the month following.

1864

CAN YOU FORGIVE HER? By Anthony Trollope, author of Orley Farm, Doctor Thorne, Framley Parsonage etc. With illustrations. London: Chapman and Hall, 193 Piccadilly. 1864. [1865, Vol. II.] 2 vols. Demy 8vo (5½ × 8¾).

Vol. I. pp. (viii) + 320.

Vol. II. pp. (viii) + 320.

Vol. I. contains twenty etched illustrations by Phiz, and Vol. II. twenty illustrations [by a Miss Taylor], all printed separately. Red embossed cloth, blocked in gold and blind. Yellow end-papers.

This story originally appeared in twenty demy 8vo one shilling parts, dated January, 1864, to August, 1865, bound in fawn paper wrappers printed in blue and red, and containing the illustrations afterwards included in the two-volume edition. Each part contains two illustrations.

Note—The first volume of this novel appeared in book form on October 1, 1864, the second volume in August, 1865. The title-pages are dated differently.

CAN YOU FORGIVE HER?: Part Issue.

The following advertisement pages, etc., should be found in a complete set. The advertisements at the front of each number are headed “Can you Forgive Her? Advertiser.” All wrappers, except front cover, are printed with advertisements.

Part I: Front—8 pp., dated January, 1864. Back—14 pp., of which the first two unnumbered on buff paper, the next four printed in blue on white paper, and the remainder a publishers' catalogue paged 1-8 and dated January 1, 1864.

Part II: Front—4 pp., dated February, 1864. Back—2 pp., unnumbered, on pink paper.

Part III: Front—4 pp., dated March, 1864. Back—6 pp.

Part IV: Front—4 pp., dated April, 1864. Between pp. 2 and 3 an inset slip on green paper advertising the part issue of Dickens' Our Mutual Friend. Back—8 pp., of which the first two on yellow paper and unnumbered, the second two unnumbered, and the remainder a publishers' catalogue paged 1-4 and dated April 1st, 1864.

Part V: Front—4 pp., dated May, 1864. Back—14 pp., of which the first four paged 1-4, the next two a reproduction on green paper of the wrapper of Part I of Our Mutual Friend, and the remainder a publishers' catalogue paged 1-8 and dated April 30, 1864.

Part VI: Front—4 pp., dated June, 1864, and printed on buff paper as wrapper. Back—14 pp., of which the first four and the publishers' catalogue the same as in Part V. A wrapper of Our Mutual Friend, this time of Part II, completes the total.

Part VII: Front—4 pp., dated July, 1864, printed on buff paper as wrapper. Back—2 pp., unnumbered, on yellow paper.

Part VIII: Front—4 pp., dated August, 1864, printed on buff paper as wrapper. Back—4 pp., numbered 1-4.

Part IX: Front—4 pp., dated September, 1864, printed on buff paper as wrapper. Back—Inset slip of yellow paper announcing the serialization in “All the Year Round” of Never Forgotten, by the author of Belladonna. 2 pp., unnumbered, on yellow paper.

Part X: Front—4 pp., dated September [sic], 1864, printed on buff paper as wrapper. In later issues “September” corrected to October. Back—8 pp., of which the last four a publishers' catalogue paged 1-4 and dated October 1, 1864. [Note—This part contains half-title, title, contents and list of illustrations (in all 8 pp.) to Volume I. It is also the last part illustrated by Hablot K. Browne.]

Part XI: Front—4 pp., dated November, 1864, and printed on buff paper as wrapper. Back—6 pp., of which 1-4 on lilac (or blue) paper. [Note—Although the illustrator had already been changed, the wrapper to this part still bears the name of H. K. Browne.]

Part XII: Front—4 pp., dated December, 1864, printed on buff paper as wrapper. Inset slip on yellow paper announcing Mrs. Lirriper's Legacy as Christmas number to “All the Year Round.” Back—8 pp., of which the last four a publishers' catalogue paged 1-4 and dated November 25.

Part XIII: Front—4 pp., undated and printed on buff paper as wrapper. Back—2 pp., of which the first printed in lilac.

Part XIV: Front—4 pp., undated and printed on buff paper as wrapper. Back—Inset slip of green paper and 2 pp. unnumbered, printed on yellow.

Part XV: Front—4 pp., undated and printed on buff paper as wrapper. Back—Inset slip of blue paper and publishers' catalogue 4 pp., dated February 28, 1865. Inset slip on white paper advertising the part issue of the Headless Horseman, by Captain Mayne Reid.

Part XVI: Front—4 pp., undated, printed on buff paper as wrapper. Back—Inset slip of yellow paper announcing the serialization in “All the Year Round” of Half a Million of Money, by Amelia B. Edwards. 6 pp., of which the last four on pink paper.

Part XVII: Front—4 pp., undated and printed on buff paper as wrapper. Back—Nil.

Part XVIII: Front—4 pp., undated and printed on buff paper as wrapper. Back—Nil.