The Duke's Children: Anthony Trollope

Lord Silverbridge has just been sent down from Oxford, his brother Gerald is an idler, both are constantly in debt and in trouble; even their sister, the sensible and spirited Lady Mary Palliser, is determined to marry penniless Frank Tregear. Things go from bad to worse when Silverbridge enters Parliament as a Tory and falls in love with the first memorable American girl in British fiction, Isabel Boncassen, an entrancing heiress with no accent but distinctly undesirable antecedents. Beleaguered father Plantagenet Palliser (now Duke of Omnium), a remote and awe-inspiring figure to his children, finally gets in touch with his paternal emotions, and learns to accept inevitable change in his private life, as he had always done as a Liberal statesman, while the young people themselves mature as they weigh in the balance romance against worldliness, personal integrity against political cynicism. Trollope boldly confronts controversial issues of his day, particularly the position of women in society - Lady Mabel Grex, too poor to marry her former lover Frank Tregear, too intelligent to accept the suit of callow Lord Silverbridge, bears tragic witness to this. Trollope fans will be thrilled to read the full version of the story

In 1879 Trollope`s publisher - probably Charles Dickens, Junior - told him to make swingeing cuts to his mss for unspecified commercial reasons. Trollope reluctantly complied, declining to excise a single chapter, but removing paragraphs, sentences, phrases and words from every page - a soul-destroying task. While he succeeded admirably and the book was duly published, and indeed, well received, much was lost, most noticeably Trollope`s ironic commentary, so central to his narrative style. Dark edges and humorous touches alike were trimmed. Out of the window went the loving detail to which he was so attached, and with it the warmth and sympathy he customarily demonstrates for his characters, here touchingly restored.