PERHAPS A GIFT VOUCHER FOR MUM?: MOTHER'S DAY
ANTHONY TROLLOPE (1815-1882) was born in London to a bankrupt barrister father and a mother who, as a well-known writer, supported the family. Trollope enjoyed considerable success both as a novelist and as a senior civil servant in the post office. He published more than forty novels and many short stories that are regarded as among the greatest of nineteenth-century fiction. MAX EGREMONT is the author of numerous biographies and novels. His biography of the poet Siegfried Sassoon was short-listed for the James Tait Black Memorial Prize. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, and lives in Sussex, England.
Trollope is that rare thing: a strong writer with a trustworthy imagination . . . Yet, beyond saying that his writing feels like life, it's hard to say just how he works his magic . . . Trollope, quite uncynically, understands both what's necessary to make the world go round and which way the world ought to be made to turn . . . Politics and gossip are still the essential life of the world . . . and any writer who can turn them into art will survive. --Adam Gopnik, The New Yorker The Duke's Children is a novel about sorrow and loss, and about a parent's pained discovery that our children inevitably grow to love us less than we love them . . . The new version will most likely not change anyone's view of The Duke's Children, and yet all those tiny excisions do add up. The restored version is a fuller, richer book. --Charles McGrath, The New York Times Book Review Trollope has brought much pleasure. He can still make us laugh and many of his characters . . . still live, perhaps rivalled only among nineteenth-century novelists by some creations of Jane Austen and Charles Dickens . . . Trollope denied that he had any mysterious genius, calling his achievement 'comfortable but not splendid.' This modesty, one feels, was genuine. It was also misplaced. The Duke's Children shows an ability to go deep enough to see the anxiety and pain that can accompany death and change. --from the Introduction by Max Egremont
