The Prime Minister by Anthony Trollope, David Skilton (Editor), D. Skilton (Editor)

A memorable surprise...by Anonymous

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July 26, 2000: I'd never read Trollope.

After I read this novel, I promptly purchased the series of which it is a part. This series, referred to collectively as the Pillaser novels, comprises six fictional works about Victorian politics.

It's possible that the characters in The Prime Minister were more believable to Victorian audiences than they are to us. And the class snobbery of some of the characters occasionally grates on the democratic sensibility of the modern reader.

Still, as the introduction to one of the novels indicates, the characters, situations, and debates that animate these narratives spark that pleasant sensation Henry James called the 'surprise of recognition.'

An example to underscore the point. Among the characters in this populous fiction is Quintus Slide (what a name), editor of The People's Banner, a conservative daily. Slide is a vicious muckraker who, with each new scandalous broadside against the prime minister, congratulates himself on his public-spiritedness and his disinterested commitment to truth, a truth that is usually without context.

Also memorable, even months after reading it, is Plantagenet's (i.e., the prime minister of the title) reflections on how it is that we come to be liberal or conservative.

Read the book. You'll never be bored.