Three of Trollope's Underestimated Novels: Miss Mackenzie, Is He Popenjoy?, and Ayala's Angel

Ellen Moody

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[This document is a note to the author's Trollope's Comfort Romances for Men: Heterosexual Male Heroism in his Work — GPL.]

All three have often been dismissed as inferior or non-serious books. On the first, Trollope's working title was "the modern Griselda" and here Henry James and Michael Sadleier are in agreement: James called the novels scenes "horrible" scenes, while Sadlier described the book as "faintly sordid. Trollope 's Miss Mackenzie was originally titled "the modern Griselda" and he refers to Miss Mackenzie as a Griselda at key points in the book; see Hamer, in Oxford Reader's Companion, 370-71; see, for example, Cockshut in his edtion of the novel: 238, 294, 296, 303; 383, 385, 393. the sexual inadequacy of George Germaine has been discussed by Markwick and Juckes. Henry James's distress is recorded in his "Miss Mackenzie" (see bibliography). Victorian reviewers rejected Miss Mackenzie on the grounds its heroine is middle-aged and plain, critics on the grounds that it's "amusing but faintly sordid" or "very inferior"; Critical Heritage, 215-30; in a group read I led on the Net two summers ago, active participants rejected John Ball because he lacked glamor, was not handsome and debonair; see Three Heroine's Texts Miss Mackenzie, Nina Balatka, and Linda Tressel.

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Last modified 9 August 2006