The Way We Live Now

Considered by contemporary critics to be Trollope's greatest novel, The Way We Live Now is a satire of the literary world of nineteenth-century London and a bold indictment of the new power of speculative finance in English life. The story concerns Augustus Melmotte, a French swindler and scoundrel, and his daughter, to whom Felix Carbury, adored son of the authoress Lady Carbury, is induced to propose marriage for the sake of securing a fortune. Trollope's portrait of Lady Carbury, impetuous, unprincipled, and unswervingly devoted to her own self-promotion, is one of his finest satirical achievements. In his kaleidoscopic depiction of a society on the verge of moral bankruptcy, Trollope gives us life as it was lived more than a hundred years ago, while speaking eloquently to some of the governing obsessions of our own age.… (more)

"Nothing escaped the satirist's whip: politics, finance, the aristocracy, the literary world, gambling, sex, and much else. In this world of bribes and vendettas, swindling and suicide, in which heiresses are won like gambling stakes, Trollope's characters embody all the vices: Lady Carbury, a 43-year-old coquette, 'false from head to foot'; her son Felix, with the 'instincts of a horse, not approaching the higher sympathies of a dog'; and Melmotte, the colossal figure who dominates the book, a 'horrid, big, rich scoundrel ... a bloated swindler ... a vile city ruffian'."--Publisher's website.… (more)

This satire of Victorian society shows the trials and tribulations of young love, the pettiness of upper class life, the raw energy and excitement of the most powerful city the world had ever seen, and the greed and corruption that lay just below its glittering surface.… (more)

The mysterious financier Augustus Melmotte buys a great house in London, where he succeeds in persuading many prominent Londoners to invest in his fictitious railroad, the South Central Pacific and Mexican. Melmotte also attempts to secure for himself a place in the House of Commons and to marry his daughter to a titled aristocrat. Trollope's masterpiece is a scathing indictment of the materialism and greed that permeated the Victorian Age.… (more)

Augustus Melmotte is a fraudulent foreign financier who preys on dissolute nobility - using charm to tempt the weak into making foolish investments in his dubious schemes. Persuaded to put money into a notional plot to run a railroad from San Francisco to Santa Cruz, the capricious gambler Felix Carbury soon becomes one of his victims. But as Melmotte climbs higher in society, his web of deceit - which also draws in characters as diverse as his own daughter Marie and Felix's mother, as well as, the pulp novelist Lady Carbury - begins to unravel. A radical exploration of the dangers associated with speculative capitalism, this is a fascinating satire about a society on the verge of moral bankruptcy.… (more)