[AnAmericanMother]

I didn't mean that John Bold was a bad man - I agree that he was naive and he certainly set into motion things (like the news media) that he didn't intend. I just didn't see Eleanor as she was developed in the later novels to be a likely match for him, or him for her.

The Warden is so much shorter than the others that I find it hard to compare with Barchester Towers or The Last Chronicle, etc. I think Framley Parsonage is probably my favorite of the Barsetshire novels, simple because the character of Mr. Crawley is so fascinating. Apparently he was patterned largely on Trollope's own unfortunate father.

Does your husband brook any criticism of the later novels (e.g. The Way We Live Now?) Surely he admits that that awful novel about the British colony that adopted euthanasia (The Fixed Period) is pretty bad?

[Barset]

"The Way We Live Now" is one of my husbands favorite Trollope novels outside the Pallisers and the church novels,
perhaps because of the BCCI scandal. We re-read the novels and I can't think of any he dislikes to the point of not speaking of the characters with fondness, or of being disinclined to meet them again, even those whose sufferings from their own monomania are distressingly poignant, as in "He Knew He Was Right."

I have never heard of "The Fixed Period" but if it comes to hand I shall certainly read it. Thank you for mentioning it.

I worry that in our enthusiasm for Trollope we may have contributed to the thread losing its focus and discouraging more interesting posts. I hope not.