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ELT 36:3 1993 him. The famous magician who specialized in exposing fraud, though gentle and respectful of their belief, shows how Doyle and Lady Doyle deluded themselves. Other essays deplore the fact that because of his interest in Spiritualism, Doyle stopped writing about Holmes. The essays in these sections provide few details about Doyle's growing beliefs, and probably no one will ever be able to determine the origins of Doyle's commitment to Spiritualism. Though interest in Doyle today comes mainly from Sherlock Holmes, the pieces collected by Orel in these two volumes give a wider picture of Doyle's other literary efforts and of Doyle himself. They also reveal the immediate impact of the Holmes stories upon their original readers who were untouched by the connotations which now surround the detective. In contrast, modern critics comment on how these same stories display the social and cultural matrix in which they were written. Yet the greatest overall impression these two collections give is of Doyle himself. He is praised not only as a writer, but as a champion where law and justice had gone askew and as a man filled with energy, enthusiasm and honor—personal elements that, perhaps, were harder and harder to find in an individual's makeup as the late-Victorian period blended into the ambiguities and uncertainties of the twentieth century. Edward S. Lauterbach ______________ Purdue University Trollope's Last Novel Anthony Trollope. TheLandleaguers. R. H. Super, ed. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1992. xv + 341 pp. Cloth $39.95 Paper $15.95 ROBERT H. SUPER, Emeritus Professor of English at the University of Michigan, editor of the definitive eleven-volume critical edition of the prose of Matthew Arnold and one of the many recent biographers of Anthony Trollope, seems to be devoting at least part of his retirement to editing Trollope novels. His handsome edition of The Landleaguers follows his editions of The Fixed Period (1990) and Marion Fay (1982). All three are scrupulously edited, not overcrowded with apparatus, and come with informative, brisk introductions, never claiming too much for the novel in question (though few I think would concur in the praise he gives to William Small's original Graphic illustrations to Marion Fay, which Super reproduces in the Michigan edition). The strange thing about the Michigan Press-Super venture is the selection of titles upon which to lavish such careful attention. Of course 366 BOOK REVIEWS it can be argued that Trollope's work is extraordinarily consistent in quality, a fact attested to by the critical praise heaped in late years upon two books that were long neglected, The Macdermots of Ballycforan, Trollope's first novel, and Mr. Scarborough's Family, finished about a year before his death. Nearly forty years ago Bradford Booth wrote convincingly on the phenomenon he called the "Chaos of Criticism" in Trollope. Nothing in literary history, Booth wrote, matches the divided opinion about individual titles: "Among Trollope's forty-seven novels there are only a handful that someone has not called his best." Ranking one's favorites among the novels has long been an unwinnable game that Trollope lovers play among themselves. But while there is no absolute consensus, many would claim (as did Trollope himself) that The Last Chronicle ofBarset is Trollope's best novel. It is clear that Barchester Towers, often with The Warden serving as a kind of preface, has become Trollope's most popular novel with posterity. In Trollope's time Doctor Thome and Framley Parsonage may have been at the top of the list. In our own day, many people rate the six Palliser novels—especially collectively, as a series—about even with the six Barsetshire novels. And The Way We Live Now, for its satiric treatment of all kinds of corruption, is the darling of many twentieth-century readers, especially less-thanardent TroUopians (such beings actually do exist, although most of Trollope's readers are passionately devoted, one could say addicted, to their author). Still, for the most part Booth's dictum holds up pretty well. Cousin Henry has advocates who regard it as a tour de force of the first rank whüe others dismiss it out of...

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