Anthony Trollope

The Fixed Period is a satirical dystopian novel by Anthony Trollope.

Gabriel Crasweller, a successful merchant-farmer and landowner, is Britannula's oldest citizen. Born in 1913, he emigrated from New Zealand when he was a young man and was instrumental in building the new republic as one of a group of similar-minded men which included his best friend John Neverbend, ten years his junior, who is now serving his term as

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It may be well that I should put a short preface to this book. In the summer of 1878 my father told me that he had written a memoir of his own life. He did not speak about it at length, but said that he had written me a letter, not to be opened until after his death, containing instructions for publication. This letter was dated 30th April, 1876. I will give here as much of it as concerns the public: "I wish you to accept as a gift from me, given...

Anthony Trollope (1815-1882) was one of the most successful, prolific and respected English novelists of the Victorian era. He wrote penetrating novels on political, social, and gender issues and conflicts of his day. In 1867 Trollope left his position in the British Post Office to run for Parliament as a Liberal candidate in 1868. After he lost, he concentrated entirely on his literary career. While continuing to produce novels rapidly, he also edited...

It was at the end of the second month when Aaron took another step in advance--a perilous step. Sometimes on evenings he still went on with his drawing for an hour or so; but during three or four evenings he never asked anyone to look at what he was doing. On one Friday he sat over his work till late, without any reading or talking at all; so late that at last Mrs. Bell said, 'If you're going to sit much longer, Mr. Dunn, I'll get you to put out the...

Set in the 1850s, The Three Clerks exposes and probes the relationships between three clerks and the three sisters who became their wives. At the same time it satirizes the Civil Service examinations and financial corruption in dealings on the stock market.

The world has not yet forgotten the intensity of the feeling which existed when old Mr. Scarborough declared that his well-known eldest son was not legitimate. Mr. Scarborough himself had not been well known in early life. He had been the only son of a squire in Staffordshire over whose grounds a town had been built and pottery-works established. In this way a property which had not originally been extensive had been greatly increased in value, and...

Mr. Robinson comes upon a party of travellers, the Greenes, consisting of one older man, a young woman, and a much younger woman, the lovely Sophonsiba. Early on in the story, Robinson is apprised of the fact that one of the seven boxes with which they are journeying to Italy is full of jewels and English sovereigns. Robinson is not particularly pleased to be the recipient of this information, and it would seem that the next thing to happen was this...

It is the air which we breathe that fills our lungs and gives us life and light. It is that which refreshes us if pure, or sinks us into stagnation if it be foul. Let me for a while inhale the breath of an invigorating literature. Sit down, Mr. Mackinnon; I have a question that I must put to you. And then she succeeded in carrying him off into a corner. As far as I could see he went willingly enough at that time.

La Mere Bauche, an autocratic innkeeper in the Eastern Pyrenees, was excessively ambitious for her only son's future. She had adopted an orphan girl, Marie Calvert, and brought her up as a daughter of the house until she learned that her son also loved the girl. The marriage would have made impossible her dreams for Adolphe's success in life, and she sent him away for a year's travel, planning to marry Marie to an elderly habitué of the inn, Theodore...