Miss Mackenzie

by Anthony Trollope

Other authorsO. A. J. Cockshut (Editor)

Paperback, 1988

Status

Available

Call number

823.8

Genres

Collection

Your library

Publication

Oxford University Press, USA (1988), Paperback, 432 pages

Description

In Miss Mackenzie Trollope made a deliberate attempt 'to prove that a novel may be produced without any love, but as he candidly admits in his Autobiography, the attempt "breaks down before the conclusion." In taking for his heroine a middle-aged spinster, Trollope chose to go against the custom followed by himself and his contemporaries of writing about young girls in love.

User reviews

LibraryThing member Renz0808

I have to admit this is my first novel written by Anthony Trollope. I have some of his other books but I haven't read any of them yet. I decided to pick this one up first because it was the shortest of the ones I have. I really enjoyed it! The book is such a excellent and subtle satire. Our heroine

is Miss Margaret Mackenzie who sufferes the great misfortune of becoming an heiress to a rather large fortune. She is a spinster who has spent most of her life taking care of her father and invalid brother. She spends the rest of the novel trying to do the best she can by the money she has inherited and eventually loses. I think one of the reasons that I love this novel is because it is so honest. Trollope tells the readers all of Miss Mackenzie's faults but it makes us like her the better for it. All of the other characters are also very honestly portrayed and we like and dislike them based on these faults. I would highly recommend this novel to anyone who enjoys a good satire full of plenty of moments of comedy and sentimentality.

Show Less

6 more

LibraryThing member stringcat3

Solid AT but one of his most melancholy novels. The dreariness of our heroine's life made me a bit heartsore, having experienced some of her plight from time to time as a superfluous (i.e., unmarried) female who didn't marry until age 35. Okay - I wasn't nursing an invalid brother, wasn't sheltered

and wasn't penniless, but our society still believes people should come in pairs. And I don't mean twins.

Surprise cameo by Lady Glencora late in the novel was a nice little extra, sort of like Sean Connery turning up as Richard the Lionheart at the end of the movie "Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves."

Show Less

LibraryThing member pgchuis

Margaret Mackenzie inherits a modest fortune from her brother in her mid-thirties and moves to a spa town to begin her life. There she (not entirely intentionally) moves in strictly Evangelical circles and considers a proposal from a curate with a terrible squint. She also considers marrying her

brother's business partner, despite the fact that he has cheated her out of thousands of pounds. She turns down a marriage proposal from her cousin, John Ball, a widower with 9 children, who regards her fortune as rightfully his. This first section is light and funny (especially about Evangelicals), although the reader is continually alarmed by Margaret's near-misses on the marriage front.

Then Margaret's brother dies, leaving his family financially ruined and it emerges that John Ball was right all along and Margaret's fortune must go to him. Margaret concedes this without demur and happily accepts when he asks her to marry him a second time. However, the engagement does not run smoothly. This second half and especially the last 100 pages seemed unnecessarily drawn out to me, but nevertheless, I thought it an excellent book, with more than usually complex (as in faulty) characters. Margaret spent most of the book nearly marrying people just because they asked her and John was very unheroic indeed. Personally I would rather scrub toilets than marry into a family including Lady Ball.

Show Less

LibraryThing member vguy

As always, wonderfully readable. The story begins with a simple premise: what if a woman emerged in mid-life with virtually no back-story, not much looks, but a reasonable fortune? It's a kind of fairy tale - Miss M is really too good to be true - but she gets our sympathy nonetheless, and on the

way we have the foibles of all kinds of human character pinned to the wall, great comic set-pieces ( the Evangelical coterie, the charity jumble sale), twists and turns of plot all leading to a happy ending of Wildean proportions. Incidentally, Trollope seems to have it in fairly much for the clergy here; the villain of the piece is a minor curate, the Evangelicals hypocritical power freaks. The Barsetshire men of the cloth are innocents, by comparison.

Show Less

LibraryThing member gbelik

Not one of Trollope's best, I think. It deals (at length) with Miss Mackenzie, a very honorable, less than young, woman, her financial difficulties and marriage prospects.

LibraryThing member NinieB

Miss Mackenzie is in her mid-thirties, and naturally good, when she unexpectedly inherits around £10,000, enough to live comfortably in 1865. She moves to a fashionable watering-place, where she joins an evangelical church with a squinting but ambitious curate. Her brother's business partner shows

up asking for a loan. And she spends the Christmas holidays with her uncle, aunt, and cousins, all of whom believe that the money she inherited rightfully belongs to them.

Trollope is at his most humorous in this novel with a complex plot. He gives minor characters names like Fuzzybell and Frigidy, and Miss Mackenzie's lawyers are Slow & Bideawhile. Although the modern mindset might boggle a little at the form that Miss Mackenzie's goodness takes, if you enjoy ironic Trollope, you should enjoy this one.

And, if you liked the Pallisers— Lady Glencora and the Duchess of St. Bungay make cameo appearances.

Show Less

LibraryThing member cbl_tn

Until her brother’s death, Margaret Mackenzie’s world had been limited largely to the house she shared with her invalid brother and serving as his caregiver. Her brother’s death opens up a new world to Miss Mackenzie, as she inherits his modest fortune. There’s enough for her to set up a

household in Littlebath, with one of her nieces as a companion. Although Margaret is long past the first blush of youth, she is not quite middle aged, and she soon finds herself with several suitors. It doesn’t take Margaret long to realize that her suitors seem to be more interested in her money than in herself. Nothing in her prior life has prepared her for the circumstances in which she finds herself. Then another abrupt change in Margaret’s fortune reinforces just how alone in the world she is.

I find Margaret to be one of Trollope’s most interesting heroines. Her courage and determination to face her problems head on seem to balance her lack of experience and social awkwardness. Several familiar faces from the Barsetshire and Palliser novels provided a pleasant surprise.

Show Less

Fewer