So, you’ve read all of Austen… Now what to read??

Well, first up is Anthony Trollope. I’m just a massive fan of Trollope, who lived from 1815–1882. For a start, he was a civil servant, who only wrote in the evenings — which didn’t stop him churning out a quite terrifying number of well-written, often moving, historical novels.

Take my advice, and kick off with The Little House at Allington. In this story there’s a quietly lovely older sister and a sparklingly sassy younger one, the elder being sought in marriage by a cousin she is fond of but cannot love — while her younger sister pretty much falls for a certain newcomer at first sight. Fantastic book. It’s Austenesque, in that the sisters can’t really have careers, as such — though they do have more choice and agency than Austen’s heroines, being fifty years farther down the same century. Trollope’s language is easier than Austen’s — more modern, less exquisitely stylish — but British society remained just as stubbornly structured as it was in Regency times.

All of his Barsetshire Chronicles are wonderful — and there are also characters in Trollope you’ll love to hate (see Obadiah Slope, who leaves Mr Collins himself in the dust in terms of oiliness!) Here’s a typically droll Trollope line: ‘No man thinks there is much ado about nothing when the ado is about himself.’