Product Description

When it appeared in 1874, Lady Anna met with little success, and positively outraged the conservative - `This is the sort of thing the reading public will never stand...a man must be embittered by some violent present exasperation who can like such disruptions of social order as this.' (Saturday Review) - although Trollope himself considered it `the best novel I ever wrote! Very much! Quite far away above all others!!!' This tightly constructed and passionate study of enforced marriage in the world of Radical politics and social inequality, records the lifelong attempt of Countess Lovel to justify her claim to her title, and her daughter Anna's legitimacy, after her husband announces that he already has a wife. However, mother and daughter are driven apart when Anna defies her mother's wish that she marry her cousin, heir to her father's title, and falls in love with journeyman tailor and young Radical Daniel Thwaite. The outcome is never in doubt, but Trollope's ambivalence on the question is profound, and the novel both intense and powerful.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #299542 in Books
• Published on: 2008-10-09
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 560 pages

About the Author
Stephen Orgel is Jackson Eli Reynolds Professor of English at Stanford University. He has edited The Tempest for The Oxford Shakespeare, and the forthcoming Oxford Authors Milton.

Customer Reviews

An Unfinished Saga
Anthony Trollope declared once that "Lady Anna" was "the best novel I ever wrote". Readers did not agree. Appearing between the masterpieces "Phineas Redux" and "The Way We Live Now", it sold poorly and has been neglected ever since. Trollope blamed this failure on his audience's objections to the heroine's choice of a husband, though similar complaints, much more vehemently expressed, had not sunk "The Small House at Allington". (There Lily Dale remains faithful to the memory of a cad, scorning the devoted attentions of a worthy suitor. Anna's wooers, by contrast, are both good men, though vastly different in rank and personality.)

"Lady Anna" is, in fact, a well-knit narrative with more suspense than is usual for Trollope. Will the courts declare Anna to be Lady Anna Lovel, heiress to 35,000 pounds a year, or merely Anna Murray, a pauper? Which of her suitors, the sometimes surly tailor Daniel Thwaite or her handsome, good-natured cousin Lord Lovel, will Anna prefer? Will Daniel's political principles lead to a breach with his childhood sweetheart? Will the impoverished Lord Lovel find honorable means to support his noble rank? The plot takes surprising, if not astonishing, turns; the characterization is as deft as ever; and there is a leavening of subtle humor, such as Daniel's cross-purposes consultation with a quondam radical poet (a thinly disguised Robert Southey) who has evolved into an intractable Tory.

The book's weakness is that the leading characters are, by and large, decent folk at the beginning and, except for one who falls into a state akin to madness, remain decent, if not unchanged, to the end. Conflicts end in rational compromises. Everybody eventually sees everybody else's point of view. Even the lawyers on opposite sides of Lady Anna's case get along amicably. (One solicitor does have the sense to grumble that such harmony is unprofessional.)

Trollope's liking for this novel may have arisen from the fact that it is light, sunny and fresh. There may be an evil earl in the first chapter and a mad countess in the last, but how pleasant for the writer to be free for a time from the political intrigues, financial manipulations and cynical worldliness of the Palliser saga and "The Way We Live Now"! Moreover, "Lady Anna" was, in its creator's mind, only a prologue. The last paragraph promises a (never written) sequel, where the characters doubtless were intended to meet sterner challenges. There are hints that the scene would have shifted to Australia and America and that the hero's and heroine's homegrown principles were to be put to the test in those lands. Thus the author had much in view that he never disclosed to his readers, perhaps accounting for part of the discrepancy between his opinion and theirs.

No one who has not read all of the Palliser and Barset novels, not to mention "The Way We Live Now", should pick up "Lady Anna". I recommend it immediately after the last-named. It will cleanse the palate and leave a lingering regret that the rest of Anna's and Daniel's and Lord Lovel's adventures will never be known.

Incidental note: The introduction to the Oxford World's Classics edition, the one that I am reviewing, is an extraordinarily silly example of lit crit bafflegab. Don't read it before reading the novel. Read afterwards, its wrong-headed ideological interpretations may prove amusing.

A surprise from Trollope!

Anthony Trollope never fails to please, and as he claimed that this was the best novel he'd ever written, the reader will expect a difference - and there is!

Josephine Murray is the victim of a bogus/questionable marriage, and begins the story as rather a likeable character that begs the reader's sympathy. However, by the end of the book she's turned into a bitter twisted Lady! Bent on her own desires and ambitions at the expense of her innocent daughter and everyone else, she loses all credibility... The selfish mother's plans are foiled by the heroic tailor, Daniel Thwaite, who rescues the daughter from a tragic future.

All fans of Trollope: prepare to be surprised by this one!

Brilliant!
I was totally swept away with this book. I wish there was a better phrase for `I couldn't put it down' but for the moment I can't think of one.

I have never read Anthony Trollope before and when choosing my first novel to read of his I chose the shortest one. I am not scared by big novels but I thought this was best. I am so glad I did and will hopefully be progressing to his huge tomes later this year!

It took me a while to get into Trollope's style but once I did I was literally transfixed. It is amazing how the simple premise of a woman torn between two men (although it is more complicated than that obviously) can be written about in such beautiful detail. Until the end I was unsure as to whom she would go with and the found the whole tale totally gripping. Anna is an amazing woman - especially for 1874! The relationship she has with Mother is fascinating as well. All I can say is don't waste any time - buy it and read it!