num_pages: 976
description: Considered by contemporary critics to be Trollope's greatest novel, The Way We Live Now is a satire of the literary world of nineteenth-century London and a bold indictment of the new power of speculative finance in English life. The story concerns Augustus Melmotte, a French swindler and scoundrel, and his daughter, to whom Felix Carbury, adored son of the authoress Lady Carbury, is induced to propose marriage for the sake of securing a fortune. Trollope's portrait of Lady Carbury, impetuous, unprincipled, and unswervingly devoted to her own self-promotion, is one of his finest satirical achievements. In his kaleidoscopic depiction of a society on the verge of moral bankruptcy, Trollope gives us life as it was lived more than a hundred years ago, while speaking eloquently to some of the governing obsessions of our own age.
language: English
title: The Way We Live Now
titlecomplete: The Way We Live Now
characters: Hamilton K. Fisker, Sir Felix Carbury, Augustus Melmotte, Lady Carbury, Winifred Hurtle
genres: Fiction, British Literature, Classic Literature, Literature, Classics, Novels, 19th Century, Historical Fiction, Literary Fiction, Victorian
ratings_count: 12881
places: England
publisher: Oxford University Press