The Kellys and the O'Kellys
Introduction by Terence deVere White
424 pages

He had been an Earl, with a large income, for thirty years; and in that time he had learned to look collected, even when his ideas were confused'. He is Lord Cashel, guardian of Fanny Wyndham, one of the two strongly contrasted heroines in The Kellys and the O'Kellys; In his second novel, once again Trollope had made an Irish setting central to his plot. Ignored at the time of publication, and difficult to obtain in print for many years, this is a more assured and polished piece of work than The Macdermots of Ballycloran. For the first time in his writing career, he experimented with a double-plot, a device which he learnt to use with increasing expertise. The first concerns the aristocratic Fanny Wyndham. She is the ward of Lord Cashel, who, upon discovering that Fanny is heiress to her brother's fortune, attempts to marry her off to his dissolute and debt-ridden son. However, Fanny is already engaged to (and in love with) Francis O'Kelly, Lord Ballindine. The conflict really begins when Lord Cashel demands that Fanny breaks this engagement. The second plot concerns the ill-educated Anastasia Lynch, wooed and wanted, at least to begin with, for her dowry of £400 a year by Lord Ballindine's tenant Martin Kelly. One of Trollope's favourite themes runs all the way through the novel: the pursuit of money for its own sake, and the triumph of true feelings over such avarice. The irony Trollope provides is the slow - and quite moving - realisation that Martin Kelly has, after all, fallen in love with this financially desirable prey, ten years older than he. Tightly constructed and speedily paced, anticipating in many ways the works of Somerville and Ross (written over half a century later), The Kellys and the O'Kellys also introduces us to many of Trollope's favourite preoccupations, such as hunting, racing, and betting. And for the first time we get a glimpse of the author's famous attention to detail: life in a small village inn (owned by Mrs Kelly) or a lawyer's office, both of which the reader can practically taste and smell. Here, too, we have Trollope's first attempt at a description of a great country house, the gloomy Grey Abbey near the Curragh, where Fanny lives poised between her overbearing guardian and his wife 'who slept the greatest portion of her time, and knitted through the rest of her existence'.

Publication Price: £27.00/$54.00

An Eye for an Eye
Introduction by Maeve Binchy
169 pages

Trollope wrote this haunting tragedy in the late Autumn of 1870, but left it in his desk drawer until its publication in January 1879. An Eye for an Eye continues his fascination with the single moral dilemma, explored through to its inevitable conclusion. The plot is a model of simplicity concerning a feckless, self-regarding young Englishman (Fred Neville) and his attempt to reconcile his duty - as the heir to the Earl of Scroope - with his moral obligations towards Kate O'Hara, a beautiful Irish girl he seduces whilst stationed with the cavalry in Ireland. The story's theme is announced early on with a vivid, intense description of the gloomy, barren Scroope Manor in Dorset, with its huge dusty rooms, and a library where 'not a book had been added to since the commencement of the century, and it may almost be said that no book had been drawn from its shelves for real use during the same period'. The reason for Fred's initial reluctance is easy to understand, as are his pleas for a year's 'sabbatical', and his longing for an 'adventure' in Ireland before he takes up his duties on the estate. In harsh contrast to gloomy Scroope Manor, Kate O'Hara lives in a secluded cottage on top of the huge Mohir cliffs in Co. Clare, in the West of Ireland: 'most unlike that sort of cottage which English ladies are supposed to inhabit ...Everything about it was impregnated with salt.' With Kate now carrying his child, Fred is hemmed in by a promise to the dying Earl not to marry a Catholic, but desperate to try to do the right thing. He offers a morganatic marriage to Kate, but his proposal to the girl and her powerful mother leads to tragedy. The tale unfolds effortlessly, bolstered with a set of vivid supporting characters: the ascetic Lady Mary, second wife of the Earl, whose interference partly precipitates the horrific outcome; Father Marty, the priest who equally misguidedly counsels the O'Haras; the beautiful Sophia Mellerby described by Trollope as having 'the intellect ...sufficient to enable her to make use of it'; and Kate's shadowy father, a fugitive convict. The narrative power of An Eye For An Eye derives in part from its form, a small chamber piece in which the tone of the music is set by a mysterious madwoman's muttered refrain from an asylum somewhere in the west of England: 'An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth. Is it not the law?'

Publication Price: £25.50/$51.00

Castle Richmond
Introduction by Max Hastings.
478 pages.

Today, Castle Richmond, the third of Trollope's novels to have an Irish background, is widely admired, even featuring in lists of neglected masterpieces. Yet the author himself almost disowned it: as usual, his judgement was erratic. It is notable not only for its skill, but also for the moving glimpses of the Irish famine which pervade the background. As the story opens, we soon learn that Sir Thomas Fitzgerald, the owner of Castle Richmond in County Cork, has descended into a long-lasting depression. The cause, one can guess, is a guilty secret. It is embodied in the persons of a pair of blackmailers, the Molletts: a drunken father and an unscrupulous son. They are trying to extort money from Sir Thomas in return for their silence on the subject of the revelations they threaten: about his wife, specifically, which if published will disinheirit his children in favour of his relative, Owen Fitzgerald. Meanwhile, in nearby Desmond Court lives the proud, cold, Lady Desmond with her two children Patrick and Lady Clara. Owen Fitzgerald loves Lady Clara, and considers himself engaged to her, a situation which Lady Desmond refuses to acknowledge, ostensibly because she disapproves of Owen's wayward bachelor lifestyle: in actuality she is herself in love with Owen, and jealous of her own daughter. Castle Richmond turns on the central question of whether Sir Thomas Fitzgerald's wife Mary was legitimately married before she met Sir Thomas; the outcome of the plot hangs on a typical Trollopian irony. If Mary Fitzgerald's first husband was already married when he 'married' her, then her own marriage to Sir Thomas is legal, therefore legitimizing his children, though this in turn makes Lady Mary the victim of a gross deception. Trollope increases the tragedy by killing off Sir Thomas before the debate over legitimacy has been resolved. And in Lady Desmond, he paints a marvellous picture of a cold, loveless woman who has married young for position in society, yet is saddled with a huge estate without money to maintain it. An alternative title might well have been An Irish Tragedy.

Publication Price: £38.00/$76.00

The Landleaguers
Introduction by Frank Delaney
357 pages.

Thirty five years after his first novel, The Macdermots of Ballycloran, and with four further Irish novels behind him, Trollope returned to Ireland for what turned out to be his last work. The details of the plot are as complicated as one might expect from any faithful reproduction of the chaotic Irish scene, bedevilled as ever by suppressed nationalism and only blatantly expressed religion. This may mark the end of Trollope's creative life: but he exhibits his old easy skill at displaying the irreconcilable claims of politics, religion and family. The plot creaks somewhat; but not disastrously. In any case it serves mainly as a serviceable background to his chief theme: the injustices he saw being perpetrated under the increasing struggles for Irish Home Rule, and probably helped by his anger at the assassination in 1882 of the Irish Chief Secretary and Permanent Under Secretary in Dublin. Trollope wove an unusual tale, his anger directed mainly at the agitators he saw in Ireland at the time, in particular Irish Americans whom he held to be the chief villains, and here represented by Gerald O'Mahony, who, although he does not approve of their methods, supports the Landleaguers' cause. Trollope's Liberal instincts were - of course - for compromise, but despite advancing years and considerable ill-health, he took exceptional care in researching the material for this novel. He made two separate visits to Ireland in 1881 before settling down to write. Unfairly castigated by critics - the Geroulds called it 'a tract ... rather than a novel' - The Landleaguers is a fascinating glimpse of the way in which the author's craft - and his political sensibilities - were still developing. It is one of the few times that Trollope tried to incorporate recent events into one of his stories; the long discursions on the agrarian troubles in Ireland, far from distracting, are reminiscent of George Eliot's lengthy digressions in Daniel Deronda, and the true tragedy of the book, notwithstanding the complicated developments in the narrative, lies in the fact that it was left unfinished with 11 of the planned 60 chapters still to be written. This does not subtract from the novel, for the intended outcome is well-signalled, but it does leave the reader wondering what Trollope might have achieved had he been able to see the work through to its conclusion. The Landleaguers was dictated by the author, which may account for its unusually spare prose style: it certainly enhances its political content.

Publication Price: £31.50/$63.00