Miss Mackenzie

This novel, written in 1864 and first published in 1865, follows the fortunes of a middle-aged spinster "overwhelmed with money troubles", as she tries to assess the worth and motives of four very different suitors. In "Miss Mackenzie", Trollope made a deliberate attempt "to prove that a novel may be produced without love", by choosing as his heroine an unattractive, middle-aged woman, but as he admits in his autobiography, even in "this attempt it breaks down before the conclusion" and she was in love by the end of the book and made a romantic marriage. At the same time, Trollope also gives a comic portrait of evangelical society in a provincial watering-place. The editor, A.O.J. Cockshut is author of "Truth to life" and "Art of autobiography" as well as studies of Trollope, Dickens and Scott, and the chronology is by John Halperin.