The Prime Minister

Anthony Trollope

• Publisher: Caelwick Press
• Year: 2026
• Topic: Literature
• eBook ISBN:
  9781868926862
• Subtopic: Classics
• Index: Literature

Plantagenet Palliser, now the Duke of Omnium, is a familiar character to the readers of the Barchester and Palliser series, but only now, at a moment of political crisis, does he take center stage. Neither the Liberals nor the Conservatives can command a majority in Parliament; the Duke is called upon as the only figure capable of forming a coalition government. He does so, but only with deep misgivings about whether the role of Prime Minister suits his character. As he assumes the role, the irrepressible Duchess, still known as Lady Glencora to her friends as well as her enemies, forms an ambition of her own to bolster his administration with lavish social display, much to her husband's consternation. The antitype to the virtuous Duke is the character of Ferdinand Lopez, whose story—along with that of his wife, and his rival—frames and intertwines with that of the Prime Minister's coalition government. While the Duke is upright but thin-skinned, Lopez possesses the thickest of skins, but no morals to speak of. His vaulting ambition likewise contrasts with the Duke's enervating self-doubt. Trollope commenced writing The Prime Minister only a few weeks after completing his masterpiece, The Way We Live Now . His caustic treatment of contemporary English society in the earlier novel spills over into the menace posed by Lopez in this one. Though contemporary critics were not impressed by The Prime Minister , C. P. Snow reports in his biography of Trollope that others were. Leo Tolstoy , for one, read it with appreciation while writing Anna Karenina , his secretary recording Tolstoy's admiration: "Trollope kills me, kills me with his excellence." Meanwhile, Harold Macmillan, Prime Minister from 1957 to 1963, told Snow that Trollope's studies of political process were "right both in tone and detail."

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Table of Contents
• Chapitre 1
• Ferdinand Lopez
• Everett Wharton
• Mr. Abel Wharton, Q.C
• Mrs. Roby
• “No One Knows Anything About Him”
• An Old Friend Goes to Windsor
• Another Old Friend
• The Beginning of a New Career
• Mrs. Dick’s Dinner Party.—No. I
• Mrs. Dick’s Dinner Party.—No. II
• Carlton Terrace
• The Gathering of Clouds
• Mr. Wharton Complains
• A Lover’s Perseverance
• Arthur Fletcher
• Never Run Away!
• Good-Bye
• The Duke of Omnium Thinks of Himself
• Vulgarity
• Sir Orlando’s Policy
• The Duchess’s New Swan
• St. James’s Park
• Surrender
• The Marriage
• The Beginning of the Honeymoon
• The End of the Honeymoon
• The Duke’s Misery
• The Duchess Is Much Troubled
• The Two Candidates for Silverbridge
• “Yes;—a Lie!”
• “Yes;—with a Horsewhip in My Hand”
• “What Business Is It of Yours?”
• Showing That a Man Should Not Howl
• The Silverbridge Election
• Lopez Back in London
• The Jolly Blackbird
• The Horns
• Sir Orlando Retires
• “Get Round Him”
• “Come and Try It”
• The Value of a Thick Skin
• Retribution
• Kauri Gum
• Chapitre 45
• Mrs. Sexty Parker
• “He Wants to Get Rich Too Quick”
• As for Love!
• “Has He Ill-treated You?”
• “Where Is Guatemala?”
• Mr. Slide’s Revenge
• Coddling the Prime Minister
• “I Can Sleep Here To-night, I Suppose?”
• Mr. Hartlepod
• Lizzie
• Mrs. Parker’s Sorrows
• What the Duchess Thought of Her Husband
• The Explanation
• “Quite Settled”
• “The First and the Last”
• The Tenway Junction
• The Widow and Her Friends
• Phineas Finn Has a Book to Read
• The Duchess and Her Friend
• The New K.G
• “There Must Be Time”
• The End of the Session
• Mrs. Lopez Prepares to Move
• The Prime Minister’s Political Creed
• Mrs. Parker’s Fate
• At Wharton
• The Ladies at Longbarns Doubt
• “He Thinks That Our Days Are Numbered”
• Only the Duke of Omnium
• “I Am Disgraced and Shamed”
• The Great Wharton Alliance
• Who Will It Be?
• The Duchess in Manchester Square
• The New Ministry
• The Wharton Wedding
• The Last Meeting at Matching