April 24, 1815

Anthony Trollope (April 24, 1815 to December 6, 1882) set some of his many novels in an English county he called Barsetshire. In this imaginary setting he wrote about the landed gentry and those who wished to be. The superior authorial view apparent in the stories confidently describes the collision of people who cast no shadows.

In Ralph The Heir (1871), a story which includes an election in what was then called a 'rotten borough', we notice the kind of cat reference typical of this narrator of social relations, rather than passions:

He had the satisfaction of addressing the people, and the people received him kindly. But he thought he observed that the applause was greater when the secretary of the Amalgamation-of-Improvement Unions spoke, ...And he was astonished to find that these young men were just as fluent as himself. He did think, indeed, that they did not go quite so deep into the matter as he did, that they had not thought out great questions so thoroughly, ....The result of all this was, that at the end of three days...[of campaigning] he did not seem to himself to be so great as he had been when he made the journey down from London. There was a certain feeling that he was a cat’s-paw, brought there for certain objects which were not his objects.... He did not reap all that meed of personal admiration for his eloquence which he expected.

The Guardian lists a Trollope novel as number 22 on a list of the 100 Best Novels. This is because of his book, The Way We Live Now (1875). The columnist discusses the villain of this story:

Melmotte, based on some scandalous financiers of the 1870s, is a figure we have come to know only too well: arrogant, ruthless, corrupt and so unfeasibly rich he believes he can buy anything, including political influence. In painting this character, Trollope's satirical fury is at full stretch. Melmotte is a "horrid, big, rich scoundrel… a bloated swindler… a vile city ruffian". How often, in the 1980s and 90s .... have we not seen such characters in contemporary English life ?
...
The Way We Live Now is a wonderful, melodramatic tale-of-the-times, by a master of his craft. It begins in satire and finally resolves into entertaining social comedy. As a savage commentary on mid-Victorian England by a marvellously addictive writer steeped in every aspect of an extraordinary society, it could hardly be bettered. No wonder the first reviews were atrocious.

Henry James  described Trollope as "one of the most trustworthy, though not one of the most eloquent, ... writers who have helped the heart of man to know itself."