David Skilton Libros

The second of the six 'Barsetshire Novels, ' is Trollope's most popular work and one of the classics of English fiction. Here Trollope continues the story of Mr. Harding and his daughter Eleanor, adding to his cast of characters that oily symbol of progress Mr. Slope, the hen-pecked Dr. Proudie, and the amiable and breezy Stanhope family. The central questions of this moral comedy-Who will be warden? Who will be dean? Who will marry Eleanor? - are skillfully handled with the subtlety of ironic observation that had won Trollope such an appreciative readership.

The social and financial problems of class-ridden Victorian England are depicted vividly and, against this background, the romance of the aristocratic Egremont and Sybil, the daughter of a poor Charist leader, develops.

The development of the English novel is traced in an examination of authors including Richardson, Sterne, Austen, Dickens, the Brontes, and Hardy as well as in discussion of such themes as quixotic and picaresque fiction