The Prime Minister
1875
In the cutthroat world of Victorian politics, charm is currency and pedigree is power. Ferdinand Lopez has neither the lineage nor the honesty that high society demands, yet he possesses something more dangerous: an unshakable belief that he belongs among the elite. Anthony Trollope's masterstroke is making this social climber genuinely magnetic, a man whose audacity and energy seduce even those who should know better. The novel centers on Lopez's meteoric rise and the moral reckoning it forces upon Plantagenet Palliser, the newly installed Prime Minister. When Lopez secures a wealthy marriage and wins political backing from unexpected quarters including, impossibly, the Prime Minister's own wife the establishment faces an uncomfortable question: will they protect their own or expose one of their own? Trollope weaves a tale about what happens when principle meets pragmatism, and whether a man of conscience can survive in a world that demands compromise.
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“He was one of those men who, as in youth they are never very young, so in age are they never very old.””
— Anthony Trollope
“She became aware that she had thought the less of him because he had thought the more of her. She had worshipped this other man because he had assumed superiority and had told her that he was big enough to be her master. But now, -- now that it was all too late, -- the veil had fallen from her eyes. She could now see the difference between manliness and 'deportment.””
— Anthony Trollope
“There is an aptness, a propriety, a fitness in these things which one can understand perhaps better than explain.””
— Anthony Trollope
“She had been notably religious, but that was gradually wearing off as she advanced in years. The rigid strictness of Sabbatarian practice requires the full energy of middle life.””
— Anthony Trollope
“Upon my word, sir,’said he, ‘I’ve hardly looked at her. It is not a matter of looks now, as it used to be. It has got beyond that. It is not that I am indifferent to seeing a pretty face, or that I have no longer an opinion of my own about a woman’s figure. But there grows up, I think, a longing which almost kills that consideration.””
— Anthony Trollope
“Leave a chimney-sweep alone when you see him, Chiltern. Should he run against you, then remember that it is one of the necessary penalties of clean linen that it is apt to be soiled.””
— Anthony Trollope
