The Way We Live Now

Anthony Trollope, 1875

Victorian novels Satire

Ambition in London's literary and social worlds exposes the trade between influence and reputation.

Read the book Contents

Length: 100 chapters
Reading time: About 24 hr 25 min
Words: 348,691

About the book

Lady Carbury sits at her desk writing letters intended to advance her literary career. Her appeals to editors introduce a world in which personal advantage can be presented as public merit, and where a claim deserves examination before it receives belief.

Trollope expands this opening concern into a novel of money, family ambition and social standing. His narrator openly tests the characters' explanations against their behaviour. The interest lies in the circulation of credit in more than one sense: people must decide whose promises, abilities and public reputations they are prepared to trust.

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Victorian novels Satire

This edition

Text from Standard Ebooks, who proofread and typeset it and dedicate their edition to the public domain. Anthony Trollope died more than 70 years ago, so the work is out of copyright in the UK.