The Palliser Sextology

I finished reading "The Duke's Children," the last of Anthony Trollope's six novels about 19th century British politics and the families involved in them - known as the Palliser novels. I don't think I had ever heard of Anthony Trollope until just after Carol and I were married and a television version of the Palliser novels was on the local PBS stations. As I recall they were on too late for me to watch, but there was an article about them and Trollope in Time magazine that really impressed me.

Basically the article talked about all the people who are addicted to Trollope's works and how they are almost narcotic in their effect - I remember something about them being like Valium in book form. Certainly that has been my experience, all I have to do is start reading almost any Trollope novel and I am lost in that world little (countryside) or large (London) forgetful of whatever had been stressing me out. Trollope wrote over 40 novels, after "The Duke's Children" I have read 17 (I think) and own another 18 (or it may be the other way around).

Shortly after I learned of them in the mid 1970's I bought a paper back edition of the Palliser novels, but was a long time getting into them. Shortly thereafter I had learned about the Barsetshire novels which have a Church of England focus in an imaginary English county. Since I was just become active in the Episcopal Church, they had more appeal and I quickly read the first two, "The Warden" and "Barchester Towers." After that I had a problem finding the remaining four novels in that set or his other novels as well. Hard as it may seem to believe in the days before Amazon.com and even Barnes & Noble and Borders it wasn't always that easy to find books that had been written that long ago.

Eventually I found the remaining four in paperback form and gradually read them. I remember that I aggressively pushed ahead to read the last two because I felt that I had too much unfinished business in my reading. There is the tension that exists (or at least exists with) me between wanting to read multi-volume works, but also not wanting to finish and realize that there are no more. The latter feeling probably dates back to having read every Sherlock Holmes story before I finished my freshman year in high school.

I was even further behind with the Palliser novels having read only two of the six before the end of 2005. That means I had the books for almost 30 years and had read only two! I read the third book, "The Eustace Diamonds" over the end of 2005 and the beginning of 2006 (these are not short books). It didn't give me a lot of incentive to move forward as it is one of the few Trollope works that I really didn't care for. I guess retirement gave me the incentive to get on with it as I read "Phineas Redux" mostly while Carol and I were in England in February and then started on "The Prime Minister" before moving on to "The Duke's Children" just this month.

In reading the introduction to the last book (which I always read after I read the book), I learned that this was one book that Trollope cut a great deal from in the editing process - reducing it to a mere 630 pages or so. Apparently the original ending left open the possibility of a seventh novel, but he recognized that he was too close to the end of his career to go on. Imagine finding that out at the same time I was dealing with the emotions of the reality that I reached the end. Of course, there is still more Trollope to read since even with 17-18 under my belt, I am not even half-way. First, however, I think I am going to finish all of Jane Auten, after all there are only six and I have already read two. Then I can go on and read/watch things like "The Jane Austen Book Club."