Thursday 5th july

I have been steadily reading in chronological order the many works of Anthony Trollope; some are good, some are not so good and some are wonderful.  This much lesser known work should be listed in the excellent.  It is in fact a hoot.; a brilliant satire, and it should be a salutory lesson to anyone going into business.  As a study of human nature it is pretty good too.  Trollope usually sets his characters in the realms of the idle rich, or at least upper middle and leisured classes, though his working class characters are always brilliantly portrayed.  Here though all is set in working class East London, where you can almost smell the brickworks and the dairies; and the struggle for daily survival and the constant need for money are wonderfully evoked.  It is also a sort of love story, though this time with no happy ending, and how satirically the game of getting  a husband is played out, with all it’s subterfuge and devices.  Great stuff, and though the title is a bit wieldy and offputting it is one of his best novels – also quite short, so easy to read too. 8/10