My shameful literary prejudices

For many years now, I've asked people who their favourite author is or what their favourite book was. When I was working in London, I asked the Irish-born P.A. of our sister company, Sinead D., and she recommended Anthony Trollope (a distant relative of the modern writer Joanna Trollope).

Over the years, I have heard many dramatisations of his works - his clerical and his political series - on BBC radio. Since BBC Radio 4 extra (formerly BBC 7) is an archive radio station, broadcasting repeats, I've often heard these series three times or more. And I always thought that they were slightly boring. Not very interesting. And I decided that I would save Anthony Trollope for my retirement, which is quite a way off. 

In the summer of 2016, I decided that I would try one of this books: The Warden. It is the first in Trollope's church-based series. And I was bowled over by it. Why? Because you hear Trollope's voice talking to you two centuries later. His sarcastic comments appeal to me. You can't help curling your lip when you read his descriptions of certain people. 

Last year, one thing that kept me sane was reading "A Trollope a Month". Thanks to the university library and this online book repository for out-of-copyright books, this was easy to do: https://www.globalgreyebooks.com/index.html

This year, after running out of books by Trollope, I decided that one of my reading challenges would be "A Dickens a Month".

I'm using the Global Grey e-book site to download books by Dickens and I'm working my way through them from the oldest to the most recent. Barnaby Rudge was a pleasant surprise and quite exciting. The Old Curiosity Shop had some interesting characters. But June's book was Dombey and Son.

And this is where my second literary prejudice comes up. Many years ago, I caught a couple of episodes of a BBC dramatisation of this series and was interested because one of the characters was acted by Paul Darrow, or Avon from the TV sci-fi series Blake's 7. However, I switched off halfway through episode two. Too boring.

Now I had to read it and it was with some reluctance that I started. Reader, I loved it. One thing about Dickens is that there are always some good characters to counteract the scoundrels and in this book, those characters - besides the poor, sickly 'son' of the title - include Florence, Captain Cuttle, Miss Tox, Susan Nipper, Richards and Mr Toots. Lovely characters all, in their individual way.

And I even felt sorry for Mr Dombey. Who knows what his upbringing was like? And at least he experiences redemption in the end. What's not to like about a happy ending? I feel ashamed that I was so prejudiced against this book for so long.

If I had to choose between Dickens and Trollope, though, I would choose Trollope - simply because the characters are not so 'larger than life' and because I love the way Trollope thinks and comments on his characters' thoughts and deeds.