Framley Parsonage

It was in very early in January of the year 2000 that our Barsetshire Marathon reached Framley Parsonage. We had had a month between Dr Thorne and Framley Parsonage when people had been invited to read and talk about Christmas and other short stories by Trollope. Once again each week I wrote an essay or essays in the form of postings to Trollope-l on the chapters we had read for that week. These "facilitating" postings of mine continued to be close readings of the text whenever I could, with some also simply in response to others, some on Trollope's sources and attitudes, some on the contemporary scene. Once again the conversation slowly emerges and moves back and forth on all sorts of things: character, scenes, personal impulses when we read. I have included many postings by other members as I could find and threaded them in according to a date or where they seemed to make sense. This was a lively conversation; new people came aboard as a result of the publication of my book. Some of them were people who had been on the original Trollope list run on Majordomo and had grown discouraged; they pronounced themselves delighted to see themselves "actually indexed!". Active participants were: Roger Batt, Catherine Crean, Sigmund Eisner, Wayne Grisslen, R. J. Keefe, Howard Merkin, Rory O'Farrell, Michael Powe, Bruce Reynolds, Angela Richardson, Jay Shorten, Jill Singer, Jill Spriggs, Gene Stratton, Tyler Tichelaar, Joan F. Wall, Judy Warner, Dagny Wilson, Liz Witthuhn.

I used the 1984 Penguin edition for whose text David Skilton and Peter Miles had returned to the original text as published by instalment in the Cornhill between January 1860 and April 1861. Thus I was not able to divide the novel up into the original volume division of the first edition published in 1861 (I:1-16, II:1-15; 3: 1-17). The calendar below has been set up to show the weeks of the actual conversation. It was at this time I resumed my practice of describing the illustrations which I had given over for a while.

January

• Jan 1, Introduction: Our Calendar and This Edition from the Cornhill; Other Available Editions; Translations: Even into Norwegian!; The Central Place of Framley Parsonage In Trollope's Career as a Financially Successful Writer: Opportunity Knocking and Hard; John Sutherland's Victorian Novelists and Publishers: An Analysis of Trollope's Career, the Only Victorian beyond Dickens and Eliot to turn out First Rate Novels and get high payment from them; Framley Parsonage: The Art of this his First Serialised Novel; Small Instalments are Hard to Keep in One's Mind with Too Much Time Intervening!; Mary Hamer's Writing by Number Shows Trollope did write with Serial Patterns in Mind.
• Jan 2, Chs 1-6 (Instalments 1&2): The Characters & Scenes; Mark Robarts; David Case, A Wonderful Dramatic Reader of Trollope for Books-on-Tape; Landscape and Houses; Lovers' quarrels; A Comparison with The Claverings.
• Jan 9, Chs 7-12 (Instalments 3&4): The Kindly Spirit and Edge Tools; Mark Robarts's Story Painful; Comedy which is Compassionate; How Much Does Mark Owe?; Bills of Exchange; Mark Robarts & Physicking Pain; A Reference to Macbeth; A Favorite Phrase of Trollope's: "The labor we delight in physics pain": Lucy Robarts is Introduced; Griselda Grantley as the strong silent type; There is a Plot; Quietness; Fairy Tale Motif and the Devil; Miss Dunstable and Co. Lady Lufton and Germaine Greer: The Menopausal Woman.
• Jan 16, Chs 13-18 (Instalments 5&6): Varying Shifting Kaleidoscopes: Dr Thorne and Framley Parsonage Compared; A Book About Marriage, Maps & Chronology; The name Crawley; Lady Lufton and Dr Thorne: Comparable Roles?; The Rev Mr Slope Replaced by the Rev. Mr Crawley? Likeness and Difference; Friendship + Respect = Love + Marriage; Close Reading, Observations and Vocabulary Comments; Chaucer's Parson in Barsetshire; Crawley and Mark's Conversation; Female Friendship in across Trollope's Novels: The Place of Framley Parsonage in This Continuum; The Use of Letters in Framley Parsonage: Was What we Assume were Personal Really meant for the Family's Eyes and the Equivalent of our Private Letters Burnt?
• Jan 23, Chs 19-24 (Instalments 7&8): Truth and Falsehood; Lord Petty Bag?; More on Griselda; Who is Lord Dumbello's father?; The Chaldicotes set and Mrs. Proudie; Framley Parsonage: The Gods and Goddesses; Political Analogies; Framley Parsonage: Griselda and Lord Dumbello; Politics, Chaldicotes and Mrs Proudie; Dramatic Readings of Anthony Trollope: Timothy West, David Case, Donalda Peters; Period Piece by Gwen Raverat; Raverat, Darwin, Trollope, and Austen: The Same Milieu.
• Jan 30, Chs 25-30 (Instalments 9&10): Framley Parsonage: Firm Name Change?; The Forms of Human Passion; No Going Back, or Irretrievable Choices in Framley Parsonage; Miss Dunstable as Mrs Thorne?; Trollope's Occasional Inconsistencies in Names for Minor Characters; Sowerby and money (Mark's bills).

February

• Feb 6, Chs 31-36 (Instalments 11&12): Miss Dunstable as Mrs Thorne? How Trollope Gets Us to Accept it through the Effective Letters and Now Other Means (Continued); Love and Serialization; Mary Hamer's Writing by Number: Trollope's First Serial; Deeply Affecting Scenes; Salmon-fishing in Norway; The Goat and Compasses; Consolation; Lady Lufton is taken by Surprise; The Story of King Cophetua; Kidnapping at Hogglestock; I like Mark Robarts; Sowerby; Playing Devil's Advocate: Anti-Framley Parsonage; More on Josiah Crawley as a Way of Criticizing the Injustices in Church Hierarchy, a Purely Social Figure in Framley Parsonage .
• Feb 13, Chs 37-42 (Instalments 13&14): rawley & Sowerby/Mrs Smith and Mr Harding: Great Characters; Dr and Mrs Thorne: "How to Write a Love Letter"; More Copulatives & the Cost of 'Quiet Continued Sunshine'; Hauling Out the Clowns; A Touch of Gentle Bearing Around the Heart of Pitch? Sowerby Once Again; The Book Climaxes in Money Woes; Outrageous & Quiet Spite v Civilised Reciprocity; Lucy Robarts: One of Trollope's Successes with the Good Chaste Heroine.
• Feb 20, Chs 43-48 (Instalments 15&16): Lucy and Josiah; Lucy Robarts, Heroine Victorian Novels: Women Have Died for Many Things, but how often for Sexual Love?; Happily Ever After?; As You Frame Yourself Other Frame You; Trollope Did not Go on Writing Framley Parsonage Forever.

• The Six Illustrations by John Everett Millais

Trollope's Apollo

• A Guide to the Classics in the Barsetshire Novels of Anthony Trollope: an informative easy-to-use online guide created by students at Hendrix College and Professor Rebecca Resinski.