Miss Mackenzie by Anthony Trollope

Miss Mackenzie by Anthony Trollope

MIS MACKENZIE

I fear that Miss Mackenzie had no sufficiently settled plan of life. She wished to live pleasantly, and perhaps fashionably; but she also desired to live respectably, and with a due regard to religion. How she was to set about doing this at Littlebath, I am afraid she did not quite know. She told herself over and over again that wealth entailed duties as well as privileges; but she had no clear idea what were the duties so entailed, or what were the privileges. How could she have obtained any clear idea on the subject in that prison which she had inhabited for so many years by her ailing brother's bedside?

If you go to Wikipedia today, you'll see on the page about Trollope that he was one of the most successful, prolific and respected English novelists of the Victorian era. Some of Trollope's best-loved works, known as the Chronicles of Barsetshire, revolve around the imaginary county of Barsetshire; he also wrote penetrating novels on political, social, gender issues and conflicts of his day. All true enough. But it misses something, too, we think: where as many of his contemporaries are now lost with the flotsam and jetsam of time, Anthony Trollope wrote things that people still want to read.

Pretty cool stuff, we think.

Of all novelists in any country, Trollope best understands the role of money. Compared with him even Balzac is a romantic.

-- W. H. Auden