Phineas Finn

Palliser #2

by Anthony Trollope, John Sutherland

The second of Trollope's "Palliser" novels introduces its title character, Phineas Finn, a talented but naive doctor's son from Ireland with Parliamentary aspirations. He must make numerous practical and ethical choices regarding his career, his political beliefs, and his romantic life, in hopes of emerging with his character, reputation, and prospects intact.

Genres: Classics, Fiction, Victorian, 19th Century, Literature, British Literature, Historical Fiction

752 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1869

About the author

Anthony Trollope became one of the most successful, prolific and respected English novelists of the Victorian era. Some of Trollope's best-loved works, known as the Chronicles of Barsetshire, revolve around the imaginary county of Barsetshire; he also wrote penetrating novels on political, social, and gender issues and conflicts of his day.

Trollope has always been a popular novelist. Noted fans have included Sir Alec Guinness (who never travelled without a Trollope novel), former British Prime Ministers Harold Macmillan and Sir John Major, economist John Kenneth Galbraith, American novelists Sue Grafton and Dominick Dunne and soap opera writer Harding Lemay. Trollope's literary reputation dipped somewhat during the last years of his life, but he regained the esteem of critics by the mid-twentieth century.
See also http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anthony_...

Reviews

[Greg · Rating 3 out of 5]

Phineas Finn: The Irish Member isn't about an Irish penis.

Rather, it is about a young Irish gentleman who who gets himself elected to the British House of Commons and the manner that he navigates through the very exciting legislative time period surrouding the Second Reform Bill!

I bet I had you clicking the 'to-read' button there, but please don't be in such a rush and tear off to your amazon, your neighborhood bookstore, get on your reading device or head over to ProjectGutenberg.org to get your copy just yet and ignore the rest of this sure to be thrilling review of mine (or go off and do those things, but please come back, or at least click like, that way I'll think you read this even if you didn't).

Did I keep you reading for a few moments? Because I should warn you while it does take place during the Second Fucking Reform Bill!!! and that is pretty exciting stuff, this is the second book in the Palliser series of novels. And while you don't need to read, Can you Forgive Her? (which I reviewed here: http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/..., and which is actually probably a tedious read and has background in some 'ancient goodreads history' (ie., things that happened about four months ago), although interestingly enough that might be the last review I've written that I cared at all about while I was writing it, I mean and this one, and any other one you've read by me in the past three and a half months, none of these were just phoned in or anything like that), to understand or follow what is going on here, there are a couple of spoilers in the basic plot of this book to events that happen in the first book. But if you don't mind having the plot of the first novel spoiled and you just can't wait to get into a novel about the Second Reform Bill era, then read this first!

Even though I only gave this book three stars it was quite good. I just didn't enjoy it as much as Can you Forgive Her?, so I rated it lower to show preference. It was probably like a 4 star to a 4.4 star of the other book though.
I started reading the book as a book, and over Christmas I think I left the book somewhere in my parents house. This was sad, since the book had all the juicy footnotes giving historical information about the Second Reform Bill and it's major players (like you or I really need this sort of crib sheet, pshaw!). When I got back to the city I was despondent over leaving my Trollope at my parents house (c'mon Karen break your New Years Resolution), but then I realized I could download the book for free on the internets (legally, too!), so I did, but I no longer had the exciting notes. And a couple of chapters and transitions seemed rather abrupt, but that's probably just how they were written, although in each case I worried that I was missing something. Like maybe a little bit of dialogue about Tenant Rights and true participatory democracy.

So I read more than half of this book on my nook, making it the longest novel I've read on my silly device, and twice(twice!) had the annoyance to trying to read only to find out that there wasn't enough power in the thing to turn on. But it was mostly an enjoyable experience, and the epub version of the book at ProjectGutenberg.org was formatted fairly well, except for the names at the end of any of the epistolary sections of the book.

I have some gripes about the book. But I think they are more about the accepted behaviors of the time than with the novel itself, although a few of my gripes might have come from the serial format the novel was initially written in. I think if the novel had been conceived and executed as a whole a few of my gripes would have been cleared up, these were sort of things like, hey we need a character here that can do this to move the plot along, so blam, new major character!

I'm not positive, and I'm sure I'm wrong, but the character Violet Effingham might be one of the earliest examples I can think of for the Manic Pixie Dream Girl (I'm sure there are earlier examples though).

The book itself can be summed up as the story of a young man who is trying to not sell out. He's trying to do the right thing, stay true to his convictions and uphold his duty, two things that aren't always in harmony with each other. He is also trying to circumnavigate that thing called love, and in that quirky 19th century English manner, try to marry correctly while also being true to himself. Like in the first Palliser novel, the women generally steal the show, they get the best parts of the novel and are generally more interesting and dynamic than many of the male characters who are more fairly stock characters.

Even if the story line doesn't sound that interesting (if it doesn't it is because you are some sort of cretin who doesn't realize that the Second Reform Bill era in the House of Commons was truly epic!), Trollope's writing is once again a joy to read. He's fun. And maybe it is more escapist reading for snobbish nerd types than seriously good literature, I don't know, but I have once again enjoyed my Trollope, even if the novel didn't turn out to be a seven hundred page tome about an Irish cock.

[Katie Lumsden · Rating 4 out of 5]

Another fantastic Trollope read, with compelling characters, rich themes and such enjoyable writing.

[Chrissie · Rating 4 out of 5]

I have just begun. I have only completed chapter 10:

Delightfully funny!!!!!!!

EVERYBODY must try a Trollope. He does not deliver the normal Victorian brew. I am NOT a reader of the Victorian genre. Trollope's are something different; Trollope's are special.

I am sitting here thinking of all those like me who before trying Trollope have no idea that such exists.

IF you have not read Trollope - please do me a favor and try one.

Delightful humor. You read them for their humor. Sweet humor. Subtle, tongue-in-cheek humor.

I am listening to an audiobook narrated by Timothy West. IF you do audiobooks, please let me request one more favor. LISTEN to this narrated by West. I am not 100% sure if it is his narration or the lines that bring out the humor so wonderfully.

*****************************

On completion:

I definitely recommend this classic. It doesn't read like a classic at all. Trollope’s books are the only "Victorian novels" that really appeal to me. It is not stuffy. It is filled with fantastic lines - humorous and full of insight into human behavior.

Trollope understands women. His female characters are true to life. There are a number here, and they are not all the same; each one is a very different individual. Each one is true to their own character. They do not become caricatures. You listen to their words. You watch what they do and you nod and empathize with their struggles. Each must decide in their own way how they wish to lead their life. Trollope's women are intelligent, thinking creatures. Many politically active, at least to the extent they can be politically active. Money and love and marriage and the choices open to women of this era - Britain 1860s - this is the feminine side of the book's central theme.

And the men, they are each different too. You may think that in portraying different kinds of people they turn into stereotypes, but they don't because you watch them being torn between choices. The central character is Phineas Finn. He has no money but he wants above all to be in Parliament. Only parliamentarians in the cabinet were paid. He was lucky. He worked hard and read to see what happens. Here the central question is to what extent you follow the dictates of your party. What if your own principles conflict with that prescribed by your party?

The politics is not heavy, although I was a bit confused at the start. The issues debated are all concerned with voting rights. At this time only those with property could vote. The ballot, enfranchisement, configuration of voting districts and Irish tenant rights are debated. Phineas Finn is Irish. The political battle is drawn from history. See the Second Reform Act of 1867: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reform_...

Why doesn’t this become dry and boring? Two reasons. First of all the humor. Secondly because Trollope through his characters and through the plot interweaves philosophical questions. Party versus personal convictions, love versus money, play versus work, privacy versus prominence. Questions all of us confront. Questions for which there is no right or wrong, but which each individual must come to terms with - as individuals and as couples. How do you choose? The book looks at different characters and different choices, with humor and without rancor.

This is the second in Trollope’s Palliser series: https://www.goodreads.com/series/5362... I liked it even more than the first, Can You Forgive Her?. Both have great humor, but this one has a bit more substance, more to think about. It is not just about who will marry who!

It is possible to get the entire series narrated by Timothy West. :0) I personally am glad I am reading them in order.

[Lisa (NY) · Rating 4 out of 5]

A novel about an affable young man trying to do the right thing in 1865 Parliament could easily have been a bore. But Trollope's focus is on people more than politics. His penetrating insight into human behavior is so much fun - especially with the female characters. I'm looking forward to the rest of the series.

[Diane Barnes · Rating 4 out of 5]

"The people can take care of themselves a great deal better than we can take care of them."
"You think no honest man can be a member of the government?"
"I don't say that, but I think honesty's a deal easier away from 'em."

One of the wonderful things about reading novels from another time and another country is that it makes you realize how little things change between times and places. It seems politics are the same whether it's the English Parliament in 1865, or present day Washington DC. Human nature never changes, only the names of those whose ambition is to rise to the top, in whatever fashion, are different.

Anthony Trollope takes us on a merry and informative ride with his hero, Phineas Finn, a poor doctor's son from Ireland, who is talked into standing for a position in Parliament. He wins his election, goes to London as a naive 22 year old, and emerges 8 years later somewhat sadder but wiser, having learned much about love, power and money in the meantime. We meet lords and ladies, prime ministers, poor people, rich people, titled people, and women who, denied power and legal status, learn how to wield influence in other ways. The miracle here is that Trollope not only makes you understand the politics of the time, but lets you know why it is so fascinating and addictive to those involved.

#2 in the Palliser series had me racing through the 700+ pages to discover whether an honest man from Ireland could make it through with integrity intact.

[Justin Pickett · Rating 4 out of 5]

“For hearts will break, yet brokenly live on.”

Why do good people who care about each other sometimes fail at love? That question, despite all the political events in this novel, is what the story is about. To answer the question, Trollope starts by taking Phineas Finn, who seemingly has no business in English politics—Phineas is young, Irish, Catholic, and poor—and sends him into Parliament as a “political godchild.”

“What! He stand for Parliament, twenty-four years old, with no vestige of property belonging to him, without a penny in his purse, as completely dependent on his father as he was when he first went to school at eleven years of age!”

Once Phineas gets to London, romantic hell breaks loose. There are multiple men competing for various women. It is especially complicated, because the men are colleagues and/or friends. One has previously killed a man. A duel ensues. The women are also friends. In the romantic relationships that follow, the men are sometimes overbearing, with dire consequences. Similarly, the women are sometimes too calculating or too demanding, with equally dire consequences.

“Is a woman like a head of cattle, that she can be fastened in her crib by force?”

“Was it not the case with nine out of every ten among mankind, with nine hundred and ninety-nine out of every thousand, that life must be a matter of business and not of romance?”

Of course, the novel is not just about love. Being organized around Parliamentary activities, it has a heavy political dimension, whereby Trollope deals with “that greatest of all blessings”—namely, representative government—and has characters debate ideological issues and specific policies (e.g., ballot reform). Some of the best quotes and most thought-provoking scenes occur on the politics side of the story.

“I am not saying that people are equal; but that the tendency of all law-making and of all governing should be to reduce the inequalities.”

“As a portrait should be like the person portrayed, so should a representative House be like the people whom it represents … And let the artist be careful to put in every line of the expression of that ever-moving face.”

OTHER MEMORABLE QUOTES:

“In nine cases out of ten it is some one small unfortunate event that puts a man astray at first. He sees some woman and loses himself with her—or he is taken to a racecourse and unluckily wins money—or some devil in the shape of a friend lures him to tobacco and brandy.”

“Love is involuntary. It does not often run in a yoke with prudence.”

“After all, a husband is very much like a house or a horse. You don’t take your house because it’s the best house in the world, but because just then you want a house. You go and see a house, and if it’s very nasty you don’t take it. But if you think it will suit pretty well, and if you are tired of looking about for houses, you do take it.”

“A grown-up son must be the greatest comfort a man can have—if he be his father’s best friend; but otherwise he can hardly be a comfort.”

“There are but few horses which you cannot put into harness, and those of the highest spirit will generally do your work the best.”

“The value of love is that it overlooks faults, and forgives even crimes.”

“How many first failures in the world had been the precursors of ultimate success!”

“And remember this, there is no tyranny to a woman like telling her of her duty.”

“But as you said once, when we want to do good to people one has no right to expect that they should understand it. It is like baptizing little infants.”

“A wicked, half-barbarous, idle people may be controlled—but not a people thoughtful, educated, and industrious.”

“Men may move forward from little work to big work; but they cannot move back and do little work, when they have had tasks which were really great.”

[Roman Clodia · Rating 4 out of 5]

(Audiobook)
This is Victorian literature as comfort reading for me - there's nothing too exciting happening (unless you consider the Second Reform Bill thrilling! Which it kind of is in terms of political enfranchisement and voting by ballot box that allows a degree of anonymity, thus starting to break the stranglehold that landowners and landlords held over the 'ordinary' man - and it was only certain men allowed a vote, definitely no women, silly, empty-headed, frothy creatures that we are!) but tracing the career of young, Irish Phineas Finn as an MP alongside his attempts to find a woman to marry is always entertaining.

As is frequently the case in Trollope, Finn is faced with various women (here not two, not three, but four!) and it's actually the women themselves who are more interesting than Phineas himself. Trying to do the right thing but tangled up in his own emotions which war with his sense of what might be expedient drives the narrative. And the 'love plot' echoes the political plot where, again, Finn struggles with independence of mind and personal integrity versus loyalty to the factions of the Liberal Party who have helped his career.

As always, Trollope is easy to read with an amiable sense of humour but he is terribly long-winded. Some of this may be attributed to serialisation but I think it's also just a characteristic of a culture that had far more leisure time and wanted three-volume novels.

There are brief glimpses of Lady Glencora and Planty Pall but though this is set in the same world as the first Pallisers book, Can You Forgive Her?, this is more attentive to the workaday life of an MP with many of the scenes set in the House of Commons. The overlaps between Parliament and the aristocracy and upper classes is made very clear so there's something a little radical about Trollope deciding to make his hero the middle-class son of an Irish doctor educated at Trinity Dublin rather than Oxbridge.

At the emotional heart of the book, though, are the women: Lady Laura Standish with her troubled marriage, Violet Effingham who can't make up her mind, the widowed Madame Max Goestler (so annoying that she is called by her dead husband's name!) and sweet, gentle Mary back home in Ireland. All of them are defined by their relationships to men but there is still much sympathy for their lives from Trollope.

[Geevee · Rating 5 out of 5]

I thoroughly enjoyed this second in the Palliser series. The characters were well described and as always with Trollope the descriptions of Victorian life that he casts his eyes (or pen) over are excellent. The main character, Phineas Finn discovers a new life as a Member of Parliament (M.P) he enters London political society and is soon moving among some very wealthy and famous people, as well as encountering those age old challenges of love and money.

At the heart of the story is 1860s Britain and the various political events, notably the Reform Act, that are bubbling up in Parliament and around the nation. This provides for backdrop for our hero and the characters that he meets along his journey. Alongside the politics, there is much on friendship, love, reading the signs of admirers, rivalries and courtship in this high Victorian era where good manners, actions, intents and words are noted and expected, as is the correctness of one's dress, financial standing and background.

With elements of humour, Trollope offers the reader an enjoyable story that covers Phineas Finn's plans for his career, life and how he will tackle the challenges he comes across.

My copy was a Penguin English Library paperback printed in 1983 (priced at £2.95!). 746 pages including text notes, background to the book, and two appendices with an introduction by John Sutherland https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Su...

[Sara · Rating 4 out of 5]

Phineas Finn is finally finished. (say that three times, fast).

I could say this is a laborious book, but that would only be half of the truth, because only the parts that describe the political issues and arena of the time are laborious, and they are worth plodding through to get to the interesting and intriguing parts. In Trollope’s defense, you really cannot tell the story of a political aspirant without telling a tale about politics. Perhaps the flaw is not in the book, but in me. I have come to hate politicians to the point that I cannot even stand reading about the ones in Victorian England.

While the Barsetshire series explored the workings of the church, the Palliser series explored the workings of the government. I, oddly enough, found the church intriguing; I cannot say as much for Parliament. It strikes me that much of what was flawed in the system then is alive and well today, even though it wears a different set of clothes. But the political shenanigans that were part of the member’s lives were fine, it was only the expansive discussion of the ballot and Irish free-holding that dragged.

The first book of the series Can You Forgive Her was much more about the characters’ lives than their political pursuits and centered around a young lady rather than a young man. It was brilliant. I, therefore, have hopes that this book will be the most difficult in this regard, and that the next in the series will be less challenging.

That was a long-winded intro to get to Phineas himself. He is an Irishman who is studying the law in England when he is asked to stand for a Parliamentary seat in the House. He is advised against it by his father, a respectable doctor but not a rich man, and his friends, who worry for his future, as he has limited funds and the seat is unpaid. However, our Phineas is a man of ambitions and, backed with a nominal contribution from his father, he pursues the chance he is given.

The story that develops is both about his struggle to maintain and prosper as a member of government and also about his romantic pursuits among the society women he encounters. Ideally, he wants to marry for love, but practically, he also needs a woman of means, since he hasn’t any himself. It is interesting how quickly he settles into a life of wealthy parties, weekend hunting excursions and monied society. He is both handsome and charming, so his lack of money isn’t as exclusionary as it might otherwise have been. His family is respectable, so his status as a gentleman opens doors, particularly to the home of Lord Brentford and his daughter Lady Laura.

Trollope is a phenomenal author for exploring the intrigues of upper-class nobility. He is to Victorian English society what Edith Wharton is to the New York rich. He knows and understands them, what makes them tick, what gets them in trouble and which rules can or cannot be broken in order to squeak a little happiness from the “duties” of having money and position.

I enjoy Trollope’s books and usually do not want them to end. By the time I got three-quarters in, I felt very comfortable with Phineas and not anxious to part company with him either. That is a very good thing, as there is a book ahead in the series titled Phineas Redux, so he will be back. Hopefully he will not be agonizing over the “ballot reform” any longer and Mr. Monk and company will have set him firmly upon the road to political success.

As usual, I was delighted to find some of my favorite characters making an appearance among the new ones…Lady Glencora is here, and I am ever interested in what happens to her!

[Elizabeth (Alaska) · Rating 5 out of 5]

Sometimes the hardest thing you'll ever do is to do the right thing. How do you weigh the cost of the sacrifice between two objectives - both of which are dear to you, and which are mutually exclusive? Ok, so those might be bigger questions than Trollope had in mind when he wrote Phineas Finn. But then again, maybe not.

The Goodreads description makes this sound dry, dry, dry. It is decidedly not so. It does have the backdrop of political maneuvering, and in fact the reader spends time in the House of Commons. Fortunately, we only hear of speech-making, rather than having to read even a sentence of hours long speeches. Most of the action takes place outside that august chamber. In fact, we accompany Mr. Finn to dinners and to drawing rooms and there is one very exciting chapter where we ride to hounds.

And there was, too, a look of breeding about him which had come to him, no doubt, from the royal Finns of old, which ever served him in great stead. He was, indeed, only Phineas Finn, and was known by the world to be no more; but he looked as though he might have been anybody, - a royal Finn himself. And then he had that special grace of appearing to be altogether unconscious of his own personal advantages. And I think in truth he was barely conscious of them; that he depended on them very little, if at all; that there was nothing of personal vanity in his composition.

... Mr. Finn seems to know what he is about. In other words, he makes himself pleasant, and, therefore, one is glad to see him.

With all of Trollope there are the love interests. If novels will be peopled with young people, there will be love interests. There were other men and women in London tied together for better and worse, in reference to whose union their friends knew that there would be no better; - that it must be all worse.

I so look forward to the others in this series!

[Sergio · Rating 5 out of 5]

Nemmeno in via eccezionale si possono dare su Goodreads 6 stellette di voto, ma vi assicuro che questo romanzo, il secondo del cosiddetto “Ciclo Palliser” se le meriterebbe tutte! Lo scrittore inglese Anthony Trollope [1815-1882] ha scritto molti romanzi di successo ma è noto soprattutto per le due serie di sei romanzi ciascuna che passano sotto il nome collettivo di “Cronache del Barsetshire” e “Ciclo Palliser”: il primo affronta tematiche di natura religiosa, il secondo politica, ma in realtà questi temi rappresentano solo lo scenario all’interno del quale le problematiche personali e familiari, quelle affettive e più specificamente amorose rappresentano il vero e più coinvolgente fulcro di questi capolavori letterari. Questo “Phineas Finn” pubblicato dall’autore nel 1869, secondo del ciclo politico, ha come epicentro l’attività del Parlamento inglese nel periodo vittoriano ma parla soprattutto di tutto ciò che succede intorno e al protagonista Phineas Finn che, appena laureato in giurisprudenza, accarezza l’idea di entrare in parlamento piuttosto che darsi all’avvocatura, quasi dimenticando, come spesso succede ai giovani entusiasti che coltivano un sogno, che per diventare politici non devono far difetto i soldi, proprio quello di cui lui è a corto… La prosa di Trollope avvolgente e palpitante, il racconto che fila su rotaie ben lubrificate grazie all’abilità descrittiva e introspettiva dell’autore, qui ai massimi livelli di espressività e incisività, fanno di questo romanzo, a mio modesto parere di lettore appassionato, un indimenticabile capolavoro che mette in fila dietro di sé altri scrittori inglesi suoi coetanei come Dickens, Hardy, Collins e le sorelle Bronte, per citare i più noti.

[lorinbocol · Rating 3 out of 5]

il romanzo è bello, per carità. forse non quanto il buon trollope ci descrive il suo fascinoso eroe-protagonista phineas, ma è indubbiamente e vittorianamente bello.
però mostra a mio avviso qualche problema di tenuta sul lungo periodo, e poi c’è che - a titolo del tutto personale - in 900 e passa pagine mi è andata di traverso un po’ di gentiluominitudine.
(resto in fondo una dumasiana praticante: per un grande romanzo dell’800 ci vuole almeno un grande cattivo).

[Classic reverie · Rating 5 out of 5]

I started the first half of 2018 with Trollope's Barsetshire series and decided to read his Palliser one next, having finished the second of six, I think I can state that like the first series, you could read each book alone but the story will be missing somethings unknown to you but if following in order the picture is complete. Several characters from Barsetshire make their appearances but these characters are flat compared to the main actors in "Phineas Finn". I say flat because they are not the main focus and they serve their purpose to move the story forward but having meet them earlier, the flatness is not so flat. The Duke of Omnium is present in the Barsetshire series but in a negative way which he makes his appearance in "Phineas Finn" more interesting because the lid of this man has been opened for us to understand him a little better. The second book (this book) of Palliser series is at least 5 years after the first book. If interested in the six books, you can look at my "Palliser" shelf.

The "Palliser" series is a political one compared to "Barsetshire" which is based on religion. You say those subjects seem dry and boring by Trollope has a way with making it interesting because it is not only about the subjects but human nature which has one wondering how this will all end. Book 1 was less political but this book was not overloaded with politics, if that makes sense. We are drawn into the characters' lives which drives the story forward. It is funny that I am reading this during the USA political season, that was not planned. I must admit I am and have been totally fed up with politics and politicians, I will not go more into that but politics of the past is bearable and especially Trollope's way. Trollope shows us that politics is the same and probably always will be so. Being independent and not following "the party line" is tantamount to being a trouble maker. If you work for the government, can you voice your opinion? All this and more are part of the political storyline.


"But as he went up to London he told himself that the air of the House of Commons was now the very breath of his nostrils. Life to him without it would be no life. To have come within the reach of the good things of political life, to have made his mark so as to have almost insured future success, to have been the petted young official aspirant of the day, — and then to sink down into the miserable platitudes of private life, to undergo daily attendance in law-courts without a brief, to listen to men who had come to be much below him in estimation and social intercourse, to sit in a wretched chamber up three pairs of stairs at Lincoln’s Inn, whereas he was now at this moment provided with a gorgeous apartment looking out into the Park from the Colonial Office in Downing Street, to be attended by a mongrel between a clerk and an errand boy at 17s. 6d. a week instead of by a private secretary who was the son of an earl’s sister, and was petted by countesses’ daughters innumerable, — all this would surely break his heart. He could have done it, so he told himself, and could have taken glory in doing it, had not these other things come in his way. But the other things had come. He had run the risk, and had thrown the dice. And now when the game was so nearly won, must it be that everything should be lost at last?"



Again as in book one, we have a young man that looks to make his name and fame through politics but even though Phineas Finn is ambitious, he is quite different than the young gentleman in "Can We Forgive Her?" I found them both exasperating but even though Phineas is so, he is more likeable, that is for sure. But Phineas is one of the most fickle characters, I met in a book in a long time. I could not believe how fickle in love he was that until the very last chapter, I had no idea what he would do. There are other love stories that keep you at the edge of your seat.




I am reading a Delphi Collection of Trollope's works and my crazy amount of notes and highlights are there. Look under my Trollope shelf above if interested. Below is the introduction to "Phineas Finn" which gives you an overview.


"The second novel in the Palliser series was first published as a monthly serial from October 1867 to May 1868 in St Paul’s Magazine. It tells the story of Finn, the only son of a successful Irish doctor, who sends him to London to become a lawyer. He proves to be a lackadaisical student, but being pleasant company and strikingly handsome to boot, he makes many influential friends. One of them, a fellow Irishman and politician, suggests he stand for Parliament in the coming election. "



My quick synopsis- Phineas Finn is a handsome young man from Ireland that finds his way into London rooms where he is enticed to enter into Parliament and all the characters both political and social make a mark in his life. What is this young man to do with his life is the main theme throughout!


I just skimmed the surface of all this book offers its reader. Read and enjoy this gem! 🌸💜💟💖


Did I love this? YES, Trollope never disappoints me! 💕💕

[Tristram Shandy · Rating 5 out of 5]

Beef and Ale

“’Convictions! There’s nothing on earth that I’m so much afraid of in a young member of Parliament as convictions. There are ever so many rocks against which men get broken. One man can’t keep his temper. Another can’t hold his tongue. A third can’t say a word unless he has been priming himself half a session. A fourth is always thinking of himself, and wanting more than he can get. A fifth is idle, and won’t be there when he’s wanted. A sixth is always in the way. A seventh lies so that you never can trust him. I’ve had to do with them all, but a fellow with convictions is the worst of all.’” (Chapter LXVII)

This reaction shown by the experienced MP Barrington Erle when he learns about Phineas Finn’s resolution to follow his own convictions rather than the party line in a vote on Irish tenant right and thereby to renounce his post as a Government secretary and to overthrow his own career seems to be quite evident an analysis of the laws of present-day political life. Therefore this analysis must have passed into common knowledge, because with regard to today’s politicians Barrington Erle would have little to worry about, since it would be quite an achievement to point out a politician who holds any convictions at all these days, whereas, of course, examples 2, 4 and 7 in his enumeration undoubtedly abound.

In his second so-called Palliser novel, Phineas Finn (1867/68), Anthony Trollope gives insight into the mysterious ways Parliament works. His hero, Phineas Finn, a decent enough, dapper young man and son of an Irish country physician, makes his entrance into Parliament by being elected the representative of a pocket borough. Soon he finds himself unable to pursue his legal career next to his parliamentary duties so that, against the advice of his father and his paternal friend Mr. Low, he gives up the law altogether, thus depriving himself of any source of revenue except the allowance granted him by his doting father. His easy-going and gentlemanly manner soon make him a favourite of some of the best families in London, and he also befriends the radical Mr. Monk, who has been talked into accepting a Government office and thus finds himself unable to freely express his opinions in debates.

The novel follows Finn’s development as a parliamentary orator, his trouble with a letter of comfort he has rashly signed for a friend, his battle with a newspaper editor, and finally his rise into office and his moral conflict, which makes it impossible for him to toe the party line regardless of his personal convictions. Apart from that, we are invited to witness the hero’s emotional journey – a gauntlet of marriage proposals, as one could say – between four women: There is the mild and penniless Mary Flood Jones from Ireland, the highly intelligent Lady Laura Standish, the sprightly heiress Violet Effingham, who is constantly battling with her aunt for her independence, and the experienced and calculating young widow Madame Goesler. With the help of these so different women, Trollope manages to portray the narrow scope of action that was allowed a Victorian woman of the upper classes. Whereas Mary seems to be the colourless and submissive kind of pet that would find her way into any Dickens novel, the three other women are real characters, and especially Lady Laura, who rushes into an unhappy marriage with the wealthy, but stern Mr. Kennedy for the sake of her reckless brother, is quite a tragic and three-dimensional character.

Nathaniel Hawthorne once wrote of Trollope that his work is “written on the strength of beef and through the inspiration of ale, and [is] just as real as if some giant had hewn a great lump out of the earth and put it under a glass case, with all its inhabitants going about their daily business, and not suspecting that they were being made a show of.” I think that the spirit of what makes Trollope Trollope could hardly have been expressed any more aptly. You will not find any of the romanticism and sensationalism that was typical of many other Victorian writers – in Phineas Finn, for instance, there is also a duel, but what would have been given a chapter of its own in Dickens or Sheridan Le Fanu is quickly passed over by Trollope and is only referred to in the conversation of the characters after the event –, and so many modern readers will find it boring. However, you will get a lot of real life in Trollope, seemingly unspectacular, but masterfully conceived and written. If, for example, you compare two unhappy marriages in literature, the Kennedys in Phineas Finn and the Lammles in Our Mutual Friend by Dickens, you will find that the latter is, of course, more dramatic and imaginative, but the former couple could actually be living next door to you.

So if you really want to get an impression of Victorian life, you can hardly ignore Trollope.

[Jim · Rating 5 out of 5]

As I re-read many of Anthony Trollope's novels, I find myself revising my rating of them upward. It seems that there are few authors I positively enjoy reading as much as Trollope. There are some, very few, of his works that I do not care for that much; but, for the most part, I find his oeuvre to be remarkably consistent in its appeal and its innate excellence.

In Phineas Finn, we have the story of the eponymous hero, a handsome young Irishman of twenty-three, who comes to make his fortune in England as a member of Parliament. When he obtains the seat at Loughshane due to the influence of his father, he finds himself moving in an illustrious crowd of famous politicians, nobility, and beautiful young women. Although his political luck has been phenomenal, he finds himself relatively poor (M.P.s were not paid for their service unless they managed to hold some position in one of the ministries) and lovelorn.

This book is about handsome Phineas and four women. First, there is Mary Flood Jones of Floodborough in Ireland, a beautiful but humble young woman. Then there is the proud Lady Laura Standish, who turns down Phineas to marry a Scottish millionaire -- though that quickly grows sour. Thereupon, he turns to Lady laura's friend, Violet Effingham, but runs into competition with Violet's childhood friend Lord Chiltern, who also happens to be Lady Laura's beloved brother. Lord Chiltern is so offended by what he sees as Phineas's treachery toward a friend, that they fight a duel at Blankenberg in Belgium -- dueling having been forbidden in Britain -- where Phineas gets a shoulder wound. Finally there is the wealthy, exotic, beautiful, and smart Madame Max Goesler.

Eventually, Phineas makes his choice, though it coincides with having to surrender his Parliamentary seat and his cushy Treasury post because of his belief in Irish reform:

He, like Icarus, had flown up towards the sun, hoping that his wings of wax would bear him steadily aloft among the gods. Seeing that his wings were wings of wax, we must acknowledge that they were very good. But the celestial lights had been too strong for them, and now, having lived for five years with lords and countesses, with Ministers and orators, with beautiful women and men of fashion, he must start again in a little lodging in Dublin, and hope that the attorneys of that litigious city might be good to him. On his journey home he made but one resolution. He would make the change, or attempt to make it, with manly strength.

Phineas Finn is the second of Trollope's six Palliser novels and easily stands among his best work.

[Kerri · Rating 5 out of 5]

"Must we be strangers, you and I, because there was a time in which we were almost more than friends?"

Of all the Trollope characters, or at least, of the male ones, Phineas Finn is my favourite. I'm not sure why exactly - I just loved him from the beginning, and throughout the rest of the series.

The woman around him are all fascinating - he does have good taste in potential wives! They are mostly much more dynamic and interesting than he is. Lady Laura has stuck with me in particular - the tragedy of her wrong decision made for the right reason that is only the right reason for such a short period of time. Having to resign herself to her mistake and watch as Phineas grows and makes choices that will take him further and further away from her. Knowing he lived her once, but no longer does, that she missed her chance... Although I was glad he didn't marry her, my heart broke for her.

[Caroline · Rating 5 out of 5]

If you go home again, keep your mouth shut.

Phineas manages to ignore this bit of wisdom, and makes two commitments that lead to a fate the reader finds it hard to accept. Thank goodness there is a fourth volume of the Palliser series that leads the reader to hope for a turn of fortune: Phineas Redux.

This is really fine Trollope, although it took me about a third of the book to get engaged. After that, it was great. The trouble was, mostly, an early replay of the plot turn in Framley Parsonage; I just can’t stand watching a good man too weak to refuse to sign a bill for a ne’er to well ‘friend’. Then we get into Parliamentary affairs, and the deeper psychology of women in love and men at politics, and the book takes off. [note to new readers: to ‘sign a bill’ means to guarantee to a lender that you’ll pay the loan back if the actual borrower can’t; like a co-signer. Took me a while to figure this out in Framley.]

Phineas really is so charming. Always having good intentions and a good explanation for what he has done, if only he could use it without compromising someone. Again and again he tiptoes to the edge, and sometimes over it, but never so that one fully blames him, or to far over that he has erred irretrievably. Trollope is so good at portraying the dilemma of how a man without a personal fortune can do any good in Parliament (where there was no pay for simply being a member, no matter how much time it took).

The women are outstanding. First I wanted to be Violet Effingham, with a ready witty retort on my lips for every occasion, then I wanted to be the worldly Madame Max. One weeps for Lady Laura, but of course she has asked for it, and she really is too complex character to like entirely; she is headstrong and willful, and rather selfish although she would of course argue the opposite.

The men are almost as good, as either political types or simply great characters. The fierce young Lord Chilten is so intense and so present that he leaps off the page, as they say. And Kennedy, what a portrait of the man imprisoned in his rigidity.

The political play is masterful. Trollope is excellent at portraying the neophyte Phineas as he stumbles through his first few sessions, ever so gradually revealing to the reader his education and the experience that leads to his good service and his eventual Great Decision. To a reader new to Trollope: it is essential that you swot up (study as for an exam) the Parliamentary system, election rules, and reform movement of nineteenth century Britain if you are to fully understand and appreciate this novel. In fact it won’t make any sense at all to you if you don’t know that ‘the ballot’ means secret ballot as opposed to announcing your vote in an open meeting, and division means going into the lobby of Parliament and standing on one side or the other in order to count the votes for or against a motion, and so forth. Phineas’s landlord Bunce will make more sense to you if you understand the gradual process of reform in these years. And the slimy journalist will also explain in part why many MPs hated to vote for it, even as liberals.

Lastly, I enjoyed the expert writing,. For example, Trollope gradually widens his scope from individual meetings between Phineas and one or two other people, to house parties, to the Duke’s garden party, to the Greshem’s giant crush. Each step contribute’s to his, and our, understanding of how this complex web of social and political relationships ticks. And by leaving his last and most interesting upper class marital option to the end, we understand how the other love interests have contributed to his character, and his decision.

Finally, Trollope is so so funny. What an elegant satirest. On Victorian duennas, on political double-speak, on social events, on Irish gentry and villages, on everything. There is a laugh on almost every page.

In short, terrific.

[Suzannah Rowntree · Rating 4 out of 5]

I absolutely loved the first Palliser novel, CAN YOU FORGIVE HER, so I've been really looking forward to PHINEAS FINN. This one, though shorter, didn't fly by for me quite so quickly. I think this might be for a few reasons - one of them being that this one focuses much more on our hero's progress through the world of politics, which can sometimes be just a little uninteresting: the novel is very much of its time and has a lot of topical political discussion. And while there IS a supporting character with the potential to be as utterly riveting as Terrible Cousin George from CYFH, he remains firmly sidelined here.

But, this is still a Trollope novel, and although it didn't quite ascend the same heights of brilliance as CYFH, it was still VERY VERY good.

Phineas, our hero, is a very lovable himbo. Like all Trollope's callow young men, you sometimes want to smack him over the head with a rolling pin, but Phineas is just so dashed well-meaning and sensible and kind that his occasional idiocies may be forgiven. I also thought it was very interesting that Trollope chose to make Phineas an Irish Roman Catholic - I believe there was a great deal of prejudice and even legislation against Catholics in England as late as the 1800s, and it was lovely to see Trollope foregrounding someone like this. Phineas' background doesn't end up having much of an impact in the novel at large, but it does play in towards the end in a very satisfying way.

The cast of CYFH doesn't show up much, and when Lady Glencora does, she's much less of a ticking time-bomb than she was in the first book. However, Trollope is still probably up there with CS Lewis in TILL WE HAVE FACES as having some of the very best male-penned female characters you will ever read. In this book he gives us two fascinating characters: Lady Laura Standish, and Violet Effingham. Violet is a sheer delight, effortlessly stealing every last scene she appears in, but it was Lady Laura who carried some of the most thoughtful writing in the book.

There was something truly cathartic about Laura's subplot. I think a lot of women have grown up being cautioned against letting emotions run away with them, and being told that big life decisions must be made in a spirit of COLD and EMOTIONLESS REASON. In Lady Laura, Trollope gives us a character who, upon finding herself in danger of loving a penniless but charming young man, sensibly runs in the opposite direction and marries someone mature, wealthy, steady, and dependable.

And it's a slow-motion disaster, replete with some of Trollope's most scorching commentary on Victorian gender roles and how hard they could be on women. His portrait of Laura's husband, in particular, is amazingly shrewd in pinpointing control and inflexibility as an expression, not of strength, but of weakness:

He was a man terribly in fear of the world's good opinion, who lacked the courage to go through a great and harassing trial in order that something better might come afterwards. His married life had been unhappy. His wife had not submitted either to his will or to his ways. He had that great desire to enjoy his full rights, so strong in the minds of weak, ambitious men, and he had told himself that a wife's obedience was one of those rights which he could not abandon without injury to his self-esteem. He had thought about the matter, slowly, as was his wont, and had resolved that he would assert himself.

I have to admit that I tend to prefer Trollope's domestic drama and female characters to his political drama and male characters, but that's because he wrote the former so very powerfully. While PHINEAS FINN contained less of the former than did CAN YOU FORGIVE HER?, I still thoroughly enjoyed the book and am already looking forward to THE EUSTACE DIAMONDS!

[Sherwood Smith]

Second reread, prompted by face to face book group meeting soon. And spoilers ahoy.

I'm glad I reread it. I'd always remembered it as a fairly pleasant second tier Trollope with a somewhat disappointing ending, and yet another of Trollope's miserable wives, while the guys get to have all the fun as usual.

On this read, I sank into the Victorian scene around the time of the Second Reform Bill, as (supposedly, though he doesn't read at all Irish, except as an outsider) Irishman Phineas Finn, equipped with good looks, smarts, a determination to make his mark in Parliament, and scan money hits London.

His good manners and affability recommend him to his fellow gentleman, but it's the London wives of political people, and above all Lady Laura Standish who get his career going.

As soon as we're thoroughly introduced to Lady Laura very early on, and Trollope takes care to point out that though she is very ladylike, she approaches politics as if she were a man, I thought, uh oh. This poor woman has a target on her back that was totally invisible to me in my college-age reading.

Shore nuff. Trollope depicts his female characters with a great deal of sympathy, but the thing that makes him ever second tier to me is the firm way he bends his variety of female characters to prove his conviction that the domestic sphere is the natural place for women, and as soon as they learn to submit to father then husband, the happier they'll be.

At least there is scant sign of his other favorite theme--that women only keep their "fresh" (read virginal) appeal if they only fall in love once. With the right man. Preferably after he indicates his interest. Phineas has one of these heroines in Mary Flood Jones (though he grabbed her and kissed her before taking off, which would have made her spoiled goods in the Trollopeverse for anyone else), who does absolutely nothing but pine faithfully for him until the very end.

Meanwhile, good grief, what a smarmy guy he is with respect to his relationships with women! Though Trollope writes, as most did at the time, from an omniscient narrative voice, the reader is expected to take Phineas at his own evaluation, as he navigates the muddy waters of Parliament, clubs, the social scene, the hunting field, country house visiting, and falling in love.

Boy howdy does he fall in love. Though he kissed Mary Flood Jones, she's forgotten entirely when he sets foot in London and starts hanging around Lady Laura. When she decides to marry Frank Kennedy, he is stunned with grief, but even while recovering from disappointment, he starts hankering after pretty Violet Effingham. He goes after her over and over, for what seems to be endlessly, until the beguiling Mrs. Max Goesler comes on the scene--goes home to court Mary--and even when he decides suddenly to pop the question, he goes back to London and has another crack at at Violet.

So I can say that I thoroughly enjoyed this book when Phineas wasn't languishing and courting. Violet is an early version of the Manic Pixie Dream Girl, a lot of fun with everyone else, and hoo boy do she and Lord Chiltern, her troubled suitor hot up the page. Poor Chiltern! Victorian readers over a certain age knew what ailed him, all right, when he's doing a thousand pushups, taking cold baths, and threatening to kill any man who so much looks at Violet. Including his bromance partner Phineas, to the extent of challenging Phineas to a duel.

Another pair of characters I thoroughly enjoyed were Madame Max and Lady Glencora Palliser (from the first of the series) who are a great deal of fun. (And Lady Glencora is NOT in love with Phineas, I am relieved to report.)

SOmewhat problematical was Lady Laura's and Violet's friendship. I think Trollope was indulging his "this is how women should be" a little too far here--especially if you compare the brilliance of George Eliot's and Mrs. Gaskell's fictional female conversations of roughly the same period. Not surprising, I think Trollope does way better with the guys.

Then there is the awful marriage of Frank Kennedy and Lady Laura. She pretty much shipwrecks her life, having made a bad decision out of ignorance ("innocence"), compounded by her wish to live as a man among the Parliamentarians, as much as she can, though of course she can only sit in the gallery and listen. I find Frank unbelievable--though she had no idea what all marriage entailed, he certainly did, being twenty years older, and his obsession with using every legal weapon at his command to force her home to "submit" and "do her marital duty" isn't just about the trivial bookkeeping that he forces on her, or the dreary Sundays, and his readers I venture to guess knew it. Cree-py!

So at the end, Phineas abruptly grows up, votes according to his moral conviction rather than political expedience, then retires to Ireland to marry his sweetly waiting nonentity, while his five sisters look on fondly.

The debates and political ins and outs are fun, the side characters colorful, replete with little details that so bring them to life. Dickens was great, but his characters tend toward the caricature. Trollope was better at sympathy and complexity, sometimes carrying out pages worth of minute emotional examination to show the evolution of the characters' motivations and thoughts.

But in the end, the only happy woman is one who wisely submits to her natural place in the domestic sphere.

[Daniela · Rating 3 out of 5]

It has been a long time since I’ve read a book that interested me and bored me at the same time. Some sections of Phineas Finn are so shatteringly inane that the only way to cope is by skipping them. Other parts keep you guessing, keep you wanting more.

This is the story of the rise and fall of young Phineas Finn, an Irishman who prematurely became a Member of the English Parliament somewhere in the 19th century, around the time of the Reform Act. Finn is charming and personable and these qualities gain him powerful patrons. He also has the habit of falling in and out of love too quickly, but somehow he gets away with his inconstancy – until the very end when it catches up to him.

It is regrettable that Trollope tried so hard to write about politics because that’s when he’s at his most boring and unreadable. When, on the other hand, he writes about people, especially women, he shines through and his novel becomes interesting again. His strength lies in the drawing rooms and in intimate conversations, not in speeches and the parliament house.

The book is strong enough, except for the ending, which is wholly unconvincing – namely, Phineas’s decision to marry an old flame and go back to Ireland. If the point was his return, surely it could have been achieved in another way. Trollope himself must have been aware that the ending was weak and nonsensical because Phineas's wife is killed off in the first page of the sequel (Phineas Redux).

Overall, a good novel, but by no means a fine one. It stands miles away from Can You Forgive Her?

[Agnes · Rating 4 out of 5]

Trollope mi piace sempre, certo bisogna entrare nella mentalità vittoriana e prepararsi ad affrontare un libro abbastanza lungo. Personalmente - ma sono amante del periodo e di Trollope - ne è valsa la pena. Sia per la lettura piacevole che per aver approfondito il sistema politico inglese del periodo , che conoscevo solo superficialmente. Unico neo , il protagonista mi ha innervosito un po’ con le sue indecisioni e i suoi tentennamenti , probabilmente voluto da Trollope che non sembra avere gran stima di quel mondo, anche se definisce sempre Phinneas : “ un gentiluomo “ . Colpisce , come sempre , la situazione subalterna delle donne, che cambierà solo dopo la Prima Guerra . Come in tutti i romanzi di Trollope il finale è sempre dolce e ottimista: a me i suoi finali piacciono.

[Ruthiella · Rating 4 out of 5]

Ah Phineas was such a frustrating hero! He has pretty much everything handed to him on a plate in this novel, yet he constantly second-guesses his decisions and his luck. It would have been very easy to dislike him had Trollope not made him so charming.

In some ways, the initial plot was reminiscent of Framely Parsonage: young, ambitious man gets burned by flying too close to the sun. But it was actually quite different. First off Mark Robarts of Framely was a happily married father of two whereas Phineas is single and fancy free; his marriage options naturally make up quite a bit of the plot. Secondly, Robarts was a vicar and Phineas, in the first chapter, is elected to Parliament and the ins and outs of Parliamentary politics are ultimately what steer Phineas’ circumstances and choices in life. While there was a romantic element to the book (which didn’t turn out the way I had hoped, but alas me!), the real love affair here is Phineas’ zeal for civil service.

I know next to nothing about British politics, but it was very helpful to determine early on that “The First Lord of the Treasury” is the same as the Prime Minister! No doubt, however, there was much else that I missed.

I am very pleased to know that Phineas Redux is coming up as the fourth book in the Palliser series! I want to know how the rest of his life turns out. Here’s to second chances.

[Laurel Hicks · Rating 5 out of 5]

Such interesting people Trollope leads us to love and hate! This is the second book in the Palliser series. Phineas Finn reminds me of Dante, who also had a bevy of ladies looking out for his welfare. The ladies surrounding Phineas are not in heaven, however, and sometimes do more harm than good. This is my fourth time to read this book.

[Anastasia Fitzgerald-Beaumont · Rating 4 out of 5]

Now I’ve finished Finn! Sorry for the awful pun. I’ve finished reading Phineas Finn, the Irish Member, the second volume of Anthony Trollope’s Palliser series of six politically-themed novels. It’s long, in excess of seven hundred pages, but on the whole entertaining and diverting.

The book touches on politics at a whole number of levels. There is the obvious parliamentary dimension, with a thorough-going exploration of the great question of the day, namely that of electoral reform (it was written against the background of the Second Reform Act of the late 1860s). There is also an entertaining exploration of sexual politics. I find Trollope’s female characters highly admirable, intelligent and well-informed, generally more so than the men. Add to this the politics of personal choice, of integrity, of the conflict between public duty and personal conscience then the mixture is beguiling to a splendid degree.

I have my own personal dilemma. How does one review a classic like this? Is there anything new to be said? I note that many of the reviews on Goodreads simply rehash the plot, which, quite frankly, does not seem terribly imaginative. I’m only going to go as far as saying that the novel is shaped as a kind of rake’s progress, except that Finn isn’t really a rake! In the end he makes the right choice, which – apparently - destroys the political prospects that he has managed to build up, as an outsider, as an Irishman, as a parvenu in a very exclusive English political club. So my review is more of a personal exploration, a series of impressions on the central themes.

To begin with I have to say that it took me a long time to warm to the character, whom the author continually refers to in a rather irritating fashion as ‘our hero.’ For all his charm there seemed to be no real substance to the man, nothing to explain his rapid ascent through the ranks of the Liberal Party, even so far as becoming an undersecretary of state in the government. He is a man of principle and a man of passion, yes, but both seemed to me to be in inverse proportion to his talents and to his ambitions. Above all, he has a rather irritating and ingratiating style. In essence my assessment of the man is precisely the same as that of Violet Effingham, one of the four women he has a dalliance with;

Mr Finn, when I come to measure him in my mind, was not small, but he was never quite tall enough. One feels oneself to be a sort of recruiting sergeant, going about with a standard of inches. Mr Finn was just half an inch too short. He lacks something in individuality. He is little too much a friend to everyone.

In the introduction to my Penguin edition John Sutherland says that the character comes near to being a kind of political gigolo, which I think was probably the author’s intention, though he doubtless would not have expressed it in such terms. Finn is saved from the fate of a gigolo – just - by the greater power of moral conscience, which, at the end, offers him a measure of redemption.

Finn’s Dilemma, a possible alternative title, is that he has never really established himself in life before he begins his political ascent. A penniless barrister who has never practiced his profession, he decides to enter Parliament at a time when the only payment was for members of the treasury bench. Politics at this time was a rich man’s game, and I really do mean man. Trollope’s women, outsiders by sex, no matter how wealthy, have their own political ambitions - to host salons and live a public life vicariously through marriage, because there was no other way at a time when they could neither vote nor enter Parliament.

As I have said, Finn, initially dependent on his father, an Irish country doctor, for financial support, eventually makes his way into office as an undersecretary to the colonies, which comes with a decent if uncertain salary. Elections and defeat in elections are always just round the corner! This solves one problem only to add another – his office, and his salary, depend on loyalty to the ministry, robbing him of the freedom to speak out on certain issues, particularly that of Irish tenants’ rights.

He also has a way out like the women in the novel – he can make an advantageous marriage; in other words he can link his star to an heiress! His search for a partner is one of the central platforms of the evolving story. His feelings seem genuine enough; his feelings, first, for Lady Laura Standish and subsequently for Violet Effingham and then, tentatively, for Madame Max Goesler, are authentic enough – he is no naked fortune hunter – but his desire for money to support his political career seem just as authentic. The ease with which he transferred his feelings from Laura to Violet suggests that his love, or his infatuation, is never that deeply rooted.

Was this Trollope’s intention, to suggest something ‘insubstantial’ in Finn’s character? Even his duel with Lord Chiltern, his friend turned rival in the pursuit of Violet, seems almost be based of on a kind of affectation, something not quite real about it all. Love here seems all about profit and calculation. It’s as well to remember, too, that Finn’s pursuit of one heiress after another is all against a background of an ‘understanding’ he has with one Mary Flood Jones, his childhood sweetheart back in Ireland, charming, beautiful, intelligent and – wait for it – penniless!

In many ways Finn’s dilemma interested me less than the dilemma of the female characters; the dilemma of Laura, who finds herself locked in a loveless marriage to Robert Kennedy, a dour Calvinist Scot, who, though a prominent member of the Liberal Party and the government, frustrates his wife in her vicarious political ambitions; frustrates her in every other sense as well in a wholly sterile union. Then there is Violet, rich but not free, unable as a single woman to set up an independent household without offending the mores of the age, who, in the end, seems the accept the relentless pursuit of the temperamentally unstable Chiltern merely to escape from Lady Baldock, the old dragon aunt who guards her lair!

Trollope writes with such verve. The hunting scenes with Finn and Chiltern will delight all sportspeople with their descriptive energy, the very thing that I picked up from the passages dealing with the same subject in Can You Forgive Her?, the predecessor to Phineas Finn. Overall there is much to delight here, an excellent exploration of the vanished world of high Victorian attitudes to politics, to morality and to money. On the downside Trollope has a tendency to intrude his own political obsessions overmuch, particularly over the question of the secret ballot, a measure which he opposed. And, my goodness, how much he lets this King Charles’ Head float into the narrative!

Ever onwards I go, now looking towards The Eustace Diamonds.

[Shawn Mooney (Shawn Breathes Books)]

An inferior Trollope in every way. The protagonist was as dull as dishwater, and the only colorful women that turned up were too minor to save the novel. The political narrative was mindnumbing. Even the writing was distinctly subpar compared to the first in this Palliser series. Put myself out of my misery a third of the way in.

[Hilary · Rating 4 out of 5]

Loved it. Trollope's writing is always excellent. He is very versatile in that he appears effortlessly to change his style according to the type of book he is writing.

[Stan Georgiana · Rating 4 out of 5]

I have to admit it, I love Trollope. This is the 9th book I've read by him and still not disappointed. Is it his best? No. Is it still good? Yes. Wonderful characters? Yes.

[Jane · Rating 5 out of 5]

I fell in love with Can You Forgive Her, my first Trollope and my first Palliser novel, and when I had to leave that book behind I knew that if wouldn’t be too long before I stepped back into Trollope’s world with the next novel in this particular sequence. The fact that this was the novel where politics came to the fore worried me a little, but it wasn’t a problem; I was pulled right into the human story by the same storyteller I had come to love as I read that first book.

Phineas Finn himself was a charming, handsome, and eminently personable young Irishman. His parents had supported him when he moved to London to study to become a barrister. When he qualified his father, a country doctor, hoped that he would come home, that he would practice his profession, establish his own home, marry his childhood sweetheart, raise a family …. but Phineas had other ideas. He had an interest in politics, and a friends had suggested that he could become a member of parliament. Because in the days before parliamentary reform all that you needed were the needs of friends in high places who could offer a pocket borough.

There was one major drawback: he would be paid nothing as a member of parliament. But Phineas persuaded his father to support him for just a little longer, until he established himself and could either begin to practice the law or secure a lucrative government post. Doctor Finn gave way, because his wife and daughters were so thrilled at the prospect of what Phineas might achieve, and so, secretly, was he.

Success came easily to Phineas, thanks to his good locks his charm, and his straightforward, open and honest character. But he often ran into trouble, because it took him a long time to learn that the motivations of others were not so simple.

Lady Laura Standish was Phineas’ first mentor, and he fancied himself in love with her; she though chose to marry for the things that she thought she needed; money, influence, and social standing in the shape of Mr Robert Kennedy. But she was to learn that those were the wrong reasons, that she had married man who could had to rule everything and would brook no arguments. It was heart-breaking to watch the marriage fail, and to understand the terrible consequences that had for an intelligent and compassionate woman.

Violet Effingham; a lovely young heiress rich enough to remain single and independent if she wishes it, though that would come at quite a social cost. She was Laura’s closest friend and there was an understanding between her Laura’s brother, Lord Chiltern, but Violet was having doubts. Because he was short-tempered, thoughtless, and not inclined to see her point of view.

She was drawn to Phineas and he was drawn to her; but that upset her friend, her friend’s brother and her friend’s brother; and that was unfortunate, because it was his pocket borough that gave Phineas his seat in parliament ….

Trollope clearly understood with Violets reluctance to marry, and Laura’s regret that she did marry, and he draws both of them, and the friendship between them quite beautifully. I drew parallels with the two friends, one linked romantically with the other’s brother scenario in this book and the one in ‘Can You Forgive Her’. There were some similarities but there were far more differences, and I thought that the characters and relationships in this book were rather more subtly drawn.

I found the continuing friendship between Laura and Violet especially engaging.

While all of this was going on Phineas was finding that his conscience and his party’s politics or his sponsor’s interests were often at odds, and that the political world was very tricky indeed.

Trollope deploys all of his characters well, and there are plenty of events and incidents along the way to keep things interesting. I’ve pulled out a few strands, but in the book they are interwoven, and everything works together beautifully.

And then – when the story was simmering nicely, but I was wondering how it was going to fill such a big book – another intriguing woman character made her entrance. Madame Max Goesler was young widow, with a rather dubious past, but with more that enough money to assure her a place in society. In the hands of some authors she would have been a stereotype, but Trollope made her a wonderfully real woman; the was independent, was bright and she understood people very well indeed.

Drawing parallel’s with ‘Can You Forgive Her’ again, I could compare Madame Max’s role in this book with the role of the widow in that first book. And again the second book wins, with a story arc that is gentler and sits more naturally in the book as a whole.

I must come back to Phineas Finn though, because his story is the thread that holds the story together. Trollope does a wonderful job of having Phineas learn and grow as the story progresses, without losing any of the things that made him such an appealing character when the story began.

The story plays out beautifully.

I’ve already moved on to ‘The Eustace Diamonds’ and I’ m looking forward to picking up Phineas’s story again in ‘Phineas Redux’ ….

[Gwynplaine26th · Rating 4 out of 5]

Il mondo dell'Inghilterra vittoriana fu molto più tumultuoso di quanto pensiamo e l'analisi del romanzo di Trollope su un ambizioso giovane politico irlandese a Londra, Phineas Finn, illumina il modo in cui la sua trama è plasmata dalle grandi questioni della giornata; voti per tutti, indipendenza irlandese, posizione delle donne nella società.

Confermate le abilità narrative di Trollope, Phineas Finn fa parte del ciclo politico di Trollope che, speriamo davvero vivamente, Sellerio finirà di pubblicare (prossimo, "Eustace diamonds", poi ancora "Phineas Redux" and so over.. )

[Richard R · Rating 5 out of 5]

Trollope described himself as a 'conservative liberal' and that perhaps accounts for some of what I felt uneasy about in the first of the Palliser novels, Can Your Forgive Her. In that case, it sympathetically treated the desires for its female characters for more autonomy, only to ultimately deny them. The same issues recur in Phineas Finn; coming from a background that is neither upper-class nor English, Finn in many ways serves as a vehicle for criticising much of English society, arguing that the role of government should be to reduce inequalities. For example, Trollope notes the parasitic quality of aristocrats like Lord Chiltern who refuse to do any work for a living, in contrast to the work ethic Phineas displays throughout. But Trollope's criticism is offset by the lack of sympathy shown for more radical causes in the novel, as with his treatment of the riot provoked by the character of Turnbull ("there can be no doubt he was wrong in what he was doing"). Trollope heavily implies that he sees characters like Monk and Turnbull as preferring opposition to working for incremental reform from within, a problem that has remained in leftwing politics since. Much of the depictions of Parliamentary life in the novel consist of liberal governments being unable to pass reforming legislation due to it being insufficiently radical for that wing of their party. The only voices given to the English working class in the novel is Mr Bunce, a character described as 'an unhappy man because he suffered from poltical grievances.. that were semi-political and semi-social."

One exception to this ambivalence is Ireland. Ireland is not a subject often treated of in Victorian literature and when it is (as with Barry Lyndon) it isn't necessarily with any sympathy. Trollope is unusual here in both knowing the subject well and treating it with sympathy; "it was incumbent on England to force upon Ireland the maintenance of the union... because England could not afford independence established." The central plot of the novel accordingly deals with the failure to reform injustices like tenants rights in Ireland and it is probably the one point where Trollope is least equivocal in critiquing the establishment.

Phineas is also in a position not entirely unlike Alice in the previous novel, in this case faced with choices over choosing marriage for love or for social advancement. But unlike Alice, such issues end up addressed with duels rather than private anguish and as one character notes; "It is so different with a man! A woman is wretched if she does not love her husband, but I fancy that a man gets on very well without any such feeling." The novel does briefly allude to Mill's attempt to establish voting rights for women but as with Alice, characters like Lady Standish retreat away from breaking up their unhappy marriages back to reconciliation with their husband in spite of having identified a position where "she had married a richman in order that she might be able to do something in the world and now that she was this rich man's wife she found she could do nothing." The advocacy of votes for women by Madame Goesler represents the most marked challenge to the status quo in the novel; "what would I not give to be a member of the British Parliament at such a moment as this!" but her status is made more difficult by being an Austrian Jew; "She had invited this woman down... the widow of a jew banker.. a jewess whose habits of life and manners of thought they were all absolutely ignorant." Trollope's authorial voice rebukes this anti-semitism as unjust and Glencora apologises later; but the marriage into the English aristocracy that had provoked this reaction falls nontheless. Her views on disestablishing the church and the right to strike consequently end up marked as foreign and essentially un-English. This implication actually recurs throughout, as in this depiction of Turnbull; "others said that Mr Turnbull was a demagogue and at heart a rebel; that he was un-English, false and very dangerous."