The New Lifetime Reading Plan

Most unfairly, it seems to have been precisely his popular success and his phenomenal productivity that deprived Trollope of a higher criticai reputation for most of his lifetime, and for most of the time since. No one, sniffed highbrow crit- ics, could write that many books, enjoyed by so many readers, and be any good. Most of Trollope's books have, I think, never gone out of print, and he has never lacked loyal readers; but it has only been within the past couple of decades that a criticai reassessment of Trollope has finally elevated his work to the place it deserves in modern Western literature. Reading Trollope is like eating peanuts—you can't stop; but Trollope is not mental junk food, he's very, very good.

We recommend four of Trollope^ novйis; youll want to read more. The Warden is the first of many novйis that

Trollope set in the fictional cathedral town of Barset. It tells the bittersweet tale of a too-unworldly clergyman who only wants to do good, honorable work in running an old people's retirement home, and whose gentle life is upset by a rival cler­gyman more interested in doing well than in doing good. Read also The Last Chronicle of Barset, the final novel, as the title suggests, in this series of tales about the town, its clergy, and its country gentry. Then try The Eustace Diamonds, part of a series following the life of an aristocratic politician, Plantagenet Palliser (later Lord Omnium), and featuring espe- cially his brilliant, ambitious wife; this one is an incisive study of the psychological impact of money on human relationships. The Way We Live Noto, written when Trollope was sixty years old, is a darker and more cynical novel. It features one of Trollope's few unredeemed villains, the scheming financier Melmotte, along with a gaggle of people who fali for financial and marital schemes they should know enough to avoid; it is wonderful social satire. Finally, read the Autobiography, in which Trollope brings to his own eventful life the same acute psychological insight he applies to his fictional characters.

Let me share a personal habit: I love to read Trollope, and never more than when I travei. Try it. The Penguin editions especially are gratifyingly fat and yet compact, easy to read and yet long enough to last for the most grueling series of plane- rides to far-flung places. He makes a marvelous companion.

J.S.M.

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THE BRONTК SISTERS

The three Brontк sisters and their brother, Branwell, a kind of forerunner of the Beat Generation, lived most of their short lives in their fathers parsonage at Haworth in the North Riding of Yorkshire. For entertainment they depended largely on their own minds plus the stories they heard about the often violent behavior of the semiprimitive countryfolk of the neigh- borhood. None of the novйis produced by the three sisters exhibits that solid acquaintance with real life that we feel at once in Fielding [55]. In their childhood and youth the Brontкs invented imaginary kingdoms of extraordinary compli- cation. Over the years they recorded the history and characters of these fantastic countries, playing with their literary fancies as other children play with toys.

Charlotte Brontк died just short of her thirty-ninth birth- day; Emily died of tuberculosis at thirty. Anne died at twenty- nine, leaving behind two novйis (Agnes Grey and The Tenant ofWildfell Hall) that are much inferior to those of her sisters. It is remarkable that in their brief and highly constrained lives, lived in the bosom of a distinctly odd family, the sisters were able to focus their imaginations to produce such an outpouring of fiction, including two novйis that retain their power undi- minished to the present day.

79A

CHARLOTTE BRONTК

1816-1855 Jane Eyre

A lady once asked Samuel Johnson [59] why in his Dictionary he had defined "pastem" as the "knee" of a horse. "Ignorance, madame, pure ignorance," he replied. Why, in earlier editions of this book, did I omit Jane Eyre? Carelessness, dear reader, pure carelessness. From my teenage reading I remembered Jane Eyre as an interesting but old-fashioned romantic novel slanted to female interests. And so, until recently, I did not bother to reread it and so correct a narrow-minded youthful judgment.

The jacket blurb on my copy calls Jane Eyre "one of the great love stories of ali literature." This says what is most important to the general reader. The book is about passion, and the passion is so concentrated and powerful that it breaks free of the stiff,