The Prime Minister was published in monthly parts from 1875 to 1876 and in book form by Chapman & Hall in 1876. Plantagenet Palliser, Duke of Omnium, achieves his life’s ambition — he becomes Prime Minister, leading a coalition of Liberals and Conservatives. The victory is immediately hollowed out. Palliser discovers that a coalition Prime Minister has no power to implement policy, because every initiative offends one faction or another. His role is to hold the government together by doing nothing controversial, which means doing nothing at all. For a man who entered politics to accomplish things — specifically, to introduce decimal currency — this is torture.
The novel’s parallel plot follows Ferdinand Lopez, a man of unknown origins (Trollope implies he is of Portuguese-Jewish descent, and the antisemitic undertones of the characterization are impossible to ignore) who schemes his way into society, marries Emily Wharton against her father’s wishes, speculates disastrously, and ultimately destroys himself. Lopez is a figure of genuine pathos — he is intelligent, capable, and not without feeling, but he has no foundation of class, wealth, or connection, and Victorian society, which welcomes him when he appears to be succeeding, destroys him when he fails.
The intersection of the two plots occurs when Lopez persuades Lady Glencora to support his Parliamentary candidacy, which embroils the Prime Minister in a patronage scandal. Palliser, whose personal honesty is absolute, is mortified; Glencora, whose political instincts are better than his but whose methods are reckless, cannot understand why he is upset. Their marriage — the finest portrait of a political partnership in English fiction — is tested to its limits.
Collecting The Prime Minister
First edition (Chapman & Hall, London, 1876): Four volumes, cloth binding.
Market values:
- First edition, four volumes, fine: $3,000–$10,000
- Very good: $1,000–$3,000
- Parts issue (8 monthly parts): $1,500–$4,000