The Project Gutenberg eBook, Castle Richmond, by Anthony Trollope

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Title: Castle Richmond

Author: Anthony Trollope

Release Date: September 18, 2002 [eBook #5897]
Most recently updated: June 19, 2010

Language: English

Character set encoding: ISO-646-US (US-ASCII)

***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK CASTLE RICHMOND***

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CASTLE RICHMOND

by

ANTHONY TROLLOPE

With an Introduction by Algar Thorold

London & New York: MCMVI

INTRODUCTION

"Castle Richmond" was written in 1861, long after Trollope had left
Ireland. The characterization is weak, and the plot, although the
author himself thought well of it, mechanical.

The value of the story is rather documentary than literary. It
contains several graphic scenes descriptive of the great Irish
famine. Trollope observed carefully, and on the whole impartially,
though his powers of discrimination were not quite fine enough to
make him an ideal annalist.

Still, such as they were, he has used them here with no
inconsiderable effect. His desire to be fair has led him to lay
stress in an inverse ratio to his prepossessions, and his Priest is a
better man than his parson.

The best, indeed the only piece of real characterization in the book
is the delineation of Abe Mollett. This unscrupulous blackmailer
is put before us with real art, with something of the loving
preoccupation of the hunter for his quarry. Trollope loved a rogue,
and in his long portrait gallery there are several really charming
ones. He did not, indeed, perceive the aesthetic value of sin--he did
not perceive the esthetic value of anything,--and his analysis of
human nature was not profound enough to reach the conception of sin,
crime being to him the nadir of downward possibility--but he had a
professional, a sort of half Scotland Yard, half master of hounds
interest in a criminal. "See," he would muse, "how cunningly the
creature works, now back to his earth, anon stealing an unsuspected
run acr