Dr Wortle's School (Penguin Classics) - Softcover

Trollope, Anthony

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0140434046 ISBN 13: 9780140434040

Publisher: Penguin Classics, 1999

Synopsis

Mr Peacocke, a Classical scholar, has come to Broughtonshire with his beautiful American wife to live as a schoolmaster. But when the blackmailing brother of her first husband - a reprobate from Louisiana - appears at the school gates, a dreadful secret is revealed and the county is scandalized. Ostracised by the community, the pair seem trapped in a hopeless situation - until the combative but warm-hearted headmaster of the school, Dr Wortle, offers his support, and Mr Peacocke embarks upon a journey to America that he hopes will lay to rest the accusations once and for all. A perceptive exploration of Victorian morality, Dr Wortle's School (1881) also contains echoes of Trollope's own life, and his personal affection for the vivacious Bostonian Kate Field.

About this title

From the Back Cover:

Can it be right to persist in a bigamous marriage?

Mr Peacocke, a Classical scholar, has come to Broughtonshire with his beautiful American wife to live as a schoolmaster. But when the blackmailing brother of her American first husband appears at the school gates, their dreadful secret is revealed, and the county is scandalized. In the character of Dr Wortle, the combative but warm-hearted headmaster, who takes the couple's part in the face of general ostracism, there is an element of self-portrait. There are echoes, too, in Wortle's gallantry to Mrs Peacocke, of Trollope's own attachment to the vivacious Bostonian, Kate Field.

With its scathing depiction of American manhood, its jousting with convention and its amiable, egotistical protagonist, Dr Wortle's School (1879) is one of the sharpest and most engaging of Trollope's later novels.

About the Author:

Anthony Trollope (1815 - 1882) enjoyed considerable acclaim as a novelist during his lifetime, publishing over forty novels and many short stories. The Warden, the first of his novels to achieve success was succeeded by the sequence of 'Barsetshire novels' and the six brilliant Palliser novels. His novels have remained well-loved today. Mick Imlah, formerly Junior Lecturer in English at Magdalen College, Oxford, is a published poet and works at the TLS.

About this edition

• Publisher: Penguin Classics
• Publication date: 1999
• ISBN 10: 0140434046
• ISBN 13: 9780140434040
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 256
• Editor: Imlah Mick