The Project Gutenberg eBook, Castle Richmond, by Anthony Trollope
This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or
re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
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***
E-text prepared by Charles Aldarondo, Charles Franks, and the Project
Gutenberg Online Distributed Proofreading Team (http://www.pgdp.net) and
revised by Rita Bailey and Joseph E. Loewenstein, M.D.
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
|