The Way We Live Now was published in monthly parts in 1874–75 and in book form by Chapman & Hall in 1875. Trollope wrote it in a fury. He had returned from a trip to Australia disgusted by what he saw as the moral degradation of English society — the worship of money, the collapse of honor, the willingness of the English establishment to prostrate itself before wealth regardless of its source. The novel is his response: a panoramic indictment of an entire civilization on the take.
Augustus Melmotte is the novel’s colossal figure — a financier of unknown origins (French? Austrian? Jewish? Nobody knows, and nobody cares as long as the money keeps flowing) who arrives in London with plans for a great railway from Salt Lake City to Veracruz. The railway is fraudulent — it exists only on paper and in the imaginations of investors — but Melmotte’s confidence, his lavish entertainments, and the cupidity of his victims keep the scheme running long enough to destroy dozens of people.
Trollope’s genius is to show how the corruption radiates outward from Melmotte’s scheme into every corner of society. The aristocracy, desperate for cash to maintain estates they can no longer afford, sell their sons into marriages with Melmotte’s daughter. Journalists write favorable articles in exchange for shares. Members of Parliament support Melmotte’s candidacy for a seat because his money buys votes. The Church accepts his donations. The clubs admit him. Everyone knows, or suspects, that Melmotte is a fraud, and nobody acts on the knowledge because everyone is profiting from the fraud.
The Parallel Plots
The novel is enormous — over 400,000 words — and sustains half a dozen major plotlines. Lady Carbury, an ambitious literary woman, schemes to place her worthless son Felix in a marriage with Melmotte’s daughter Marie. Paul Montague, an honest young man entangled in Melmotte’s scheme, tries to extricate himself while pursuing Hetta Carbury. Roger Carbury, the old-fashioned Suffolk squire who represents Trollope’s values of honesty, duty, and land-based stability, watches the London spectacle with horror. Each plotline explores a different dimension of the novel’s central theme: what happens when a society abandons its values for the sake of money.
Modern Reassessment
The Way We Live Now was undervalued in Trollope’s lifetime — he thought it his best novel, but critics found it too long and too bitter — and was rediscovered in the twentieth century as prophetic. The parallels with later financial scandals — from the South Sea Bubble to Enron to the 2008 financial crisis — are striking, and the novel’s analysis of how charismatic fraudsters exploit the greed and cowardice of those around them has lost nothing of its force.
Collecting The Way We Live Now
First edition (Chapman & Hall, London, 1875): Two volumes, cloth binding.
Market values:
- First edition, two volumes, fine: $3,000–$8,000
- Very good: $1,000–$3,000
- Parts issue (20 monthly parts): $2,000–$5,000 complete
- Later single-volume editions: $100–$400