The Way We Live Now (Penguin Classics)

by Anthony Trollope (Author), Frank Kermode (Editor), Anthony Trollope (Author), Frank Kermode (Introduction), Anthony Trollope (Author), Frank Kermode (Editor), Anthony Trollope (Author)

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  $4.19

  The Way We Live Now is Anthony Trollope's radical exploration of the dangers associated with speculative capitalism, edited with an introduction and notes by Frank Kermode in Penguin Classics . Augustus Melmotte is a fraudulent foreign financier who preys on dissolute nobility - using charm to tempt the weak into making foolish investments in his dubious schemes. Persuaded to put money into a notional plot to run a railroad from San Francisco to Santa Cruz, the capricious gambler Felix Carbury soon becomes one of his victims. But as Melmotte climbs higher in society, his web of deceit - which also draws in characters as diverse as his own daughter Marie and Felix's mother, the pulp novelist Lady Carbury - begins to unravel. A radical exploration of the dangers associated with speculative capitalism, this is a fascinating satire about a society on the verge of moral bankruptcy. Frank Kermode's introduction explores the real-life inspiration for Trollope's masterly satire. This edition also includes detailed notes. Anthony Trollope (1815-82) had an unhappy childhood characterised by a stark contrast between his family's high social standing and their comparative poverty. He wrote his earliest novels while working as a Post Office inspector, but did not meet with success until the publication of the first of his 'Barsetshire novels', The Warden (1855). As well as writing over forty novels, including such popular works as Can You Forgive Her? (1865), Phineas Finn (1869), He Knew He Was Right (1869) and The Way We Live Now (1875) Trollope is credited with introducing the postbox to England. If you enjoyed The Way We Live Now , you might like William Makepeace Thackeray's Vanity Fair , also available in Penguin Classics . Trollope's masterpiece ...its examination of how hopes of easy money can corrupt remains relevant today . ( Observer ).

• Used

  Paperback
  1982

  $5.23

  The Way We Live Now is both a satire of the literary world of London in the 1870s and a bold indictment of the new power of speculative finance in English life. Trollope is described as the quintessential Victorian novelist.

• New

  Paperback
  1995

  $7.04

  With an Introduction and Notes by Peter Merchant. Canterbury Christ Church College. The tough-mindedness of the social satire in and its air of palpable integrity give this novel a special place in Anthony Trollope's Literary career. Trollope paints a picture as panoramic as his title promises, of the life of 1870s London, the loves of those drawn to and through the city, and the career of Augustus Melmotte. Melmotte is one of the Victorian novel's greatest and strangest creations, and is an achievement undimmed by the passage of time. Trollope's 'Now' might, in the twenty-first century, look like some distant disenchanted 'Then', but this is still the yesterday which we must understand in order to make proper sense of our today.