The Eustace Diamonds (Penguin Classics) - Softcover

Trollope, Anthony

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0141441208 ISBN 13: 9780141441207

Publisher: Penguin Classics, 2004

Synopsis

The third novel in Trollope’s Palliser series, The Eustace Diamonds bears all the hallmarks of his later works, blending dark cynicism with humor and a keen perception of human nature. Following the death of her husband, Sir Florian, beautiful Lizzie Eustace mysteriously comes into possession of a hugely expensive diamond necklace. She maintains it was a gift from her husband, but the Eustace lawyers insist she give it up, and while her cousin Frank takes her side, her new lover, Lord Fawn, declares that he will only marry her if the necklace is surrendered. As gossip and scandal intensify, Lizzie’s truthfulness is thrown into doubt, and, in her desire to keep the jewels, she is driven to increasingly desperate acts.

This revised edition of The Eustace Diamonds includes an updated introduction which explores Trollope's depiction of a society that worships money and highlights his concerns with truth, honesty, and honor, as well as new explanatory notes and suggestions for further reading. 

For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.

About this title

From the Inside Flap:

Anthony Trollope's celebrated Parliamentary novels, of which The Eustace Diamonds (1873) is the third and most famous, are at once unfailingly amusing social comedies, melodramas of greed and deception, and precise nature studies of the political animal in its mid-Victorian habitat. With its purloined jewels, its conniving, resilient, mercenary heroine, and its partiality for the human spectacle in all its complexity, The Eustace Diamonds is a splendid example of Trollope's art at its most assured.

About the Author:

Anthony Trollope (1815-1882) was born in London to a bankrupt barrister father and a mother who, as a well-known writer, supported the family. Trollope enjoyed considerable acclaim both as a novelist and as a senior civil servant in the Post Office. He published more than forty novels and many short stories that are regarded by some as among the greatest of nineteenth-century fiction.

Stephen Gill is a professor of English literature at Oxford University, a fellow of Lincoln College, and editor of Selected Poems by William Wordsworth.

John Sutherland is Lord Northcliffe Professor of Modern English Literature at University College London and wrote the introduction to Chekhov’s The Shooting Party for Penguin Classics.

About this edition

• Publisher: Penguin Classics
• Publication date: 2004
• ISBN 10: 0141441208
• ISBN 13: 9780141441207
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 800
• Editor: Gill Stephen, Sutherland John