Is He Popenjoy?
Notes
The weirdest-named Trollope book so far; a fairly low-key novel about inheritance and identities. The titular question: the old heir to the estate has been abroad for decades, and returns with a new wife and baby that can inherit the things others expected. But IS the baby legitimate? Is he REALLY Popenjoy?
Reading this on the heels of Armadale, which also has a big plot point about a scheme to defraud an estate with a secret 'foreign' marriage.
Reading this on the heels of Armadale, which also has a big plot point about a scheme to defraud an estate with a secret 'foreign' marriage.
Noted on June 29, 2026
Quotes
[ Love this metaphor for ‘a person doing an introduction and stealing the thunder of the main speaker’: ] Like a good chairwoman, she took none of the bread out of the Baroness's mouth.Quoted on June 29, 2026
[ We are all writing short messages ] In olden times, fifteen or twenty years ago, when telegraph wires were still young, and messages were confined to diplomatic secrets, horse-racing, and the rise and fall of stocks, lovers used to indulge in rapturous expressions which would run over pages; but the pith and strength of laconic diction has now been taught to us by the self-sacrificing patriotism of the Post Office. We have all felt the vigour of telegrammatic expression, and, even when we do not trust the wire, we employ the force of wiry language.Quoted on June 29, 2026
There are spectacles which are so much more spectacles than other spectacles that they make the beholder feel that there is before him a pair of spectacles carrying a face, rather than a face carrying a pair of spectacles.Quoted on June 29, 2026