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and the conduct appropriate to them. It is natural to lament the passing of a civility, whatever its basis in injustice, and to deplore the rude excesses that supplant it. If Trollope says nothing about the gross disparity between rich and poor in these years, it may be that the wickedness of that disparity is reflected in the venality and inanity of the rich as he represents them. And of course it can be said that his title could be applied to the description of almost any developed society at any modern period, including our own.
    A NOTE ON THE TEXT
    The text of this edition is taken from the last edition of Trollope’s lifetime (Chatto & Windus, 1877). Some obvious errors have been corrected. It has not seemed necessary to correct small inconsistencies of spelling. In the notes on individual points in the text – gathered at the end of this volume – I am indebted to the notes of Professor John Sutherland (edition of 1982), some of which are in their turn indebted to the edition of Robert Tracy (1974).
    The complicated writing and publishing history of
The Way We Live Now
has been studied in minute detail by Professor Sutherland in two articles. 1 Trollope wrote the novel in twenty parts of thirty-two printed pages, dividing each part into five chapters, a task calling for elaborate planning and ferociously methodical labour, his best performance was to write eight numbers (Chapters 31 –70) in six weeks, with much necessary ‘tinkering’ as he went along. Unlike Thackeray, he did not use the proof-stage for further corrections. Sutherland concludes from his study that Trollope’s own account of his methods of work, as we have it in the
Autobiography
, is put in question by the evidence of his working materials for this novel.
    The Way We Live Now
was the fifth of Trollope’s novels to be published in parts, by this time a rare procedure. In June 1875, three months before the part-publication was finished, the publisher, Chapman & Hall, brought out the two-volume first edition at 21s. It was made up of the parts. The publishers rushed it out because they had already assigned the copyright to Chatto & Windus, a firm specializing in cheaper reprints, for £300, and a 6s. rival could be expected before the end of the year. Chatto subsequently published several editions in descending price ranges, some much reduced in bulk from the two-volume edition. The impetus of the book, never exceptionally strong, was eventually exhausted, and the book was out of print for many years. Its reputation as the greatest of Trollope’s novels began just as Chatto’s
    stock finally ran out, with Michael Sadleir’s
Commentary
of 1928. Sutherland concludes from his examination of the accounts that neither Chapman & Hall nor Chatto & Windus, did very well out of
The Way We Live Now
, though Trollope, pocketing his £3,000, certainly did.
    It is not probable that Trollope gave much attention to the text, at any rate after the proofs of the parts, but somebody in Chatto’s office corrected a few errors in the Chapman & Hall edition. Others have been corrected by Robert Tracy in his edition (Indianapolis: The Bobbs-Merrill Company, 1974). I have incorporated some but not all of Tracy’s emendations; some of them had already been made by Chatto, and, as he demonstrates, by the publishers of the first American edition and the European edition of Tauchnitz. Some I think unnecessary (for example, ‘missels’ in Chapter 40 is an old variant of ‘trestles’ and need not be changed).
    I am grateful to Professor Sutherland for much help with this edition.
THE WAY WE LIVE NOW
CONTENTS
    1
Three Editors
7
    2
The Carbury Family
15
    3
The Beargarden
23
    4
Madame Melmotte’s Ball
29
    5
After the Ball
41
    6
Roger Carbury and Paul Montague
44
    7
Mentor
53
    8
Love-sick
60
    9
The Great Railway to Vera Cruz
66
    10
Mr Fisker’s Success
74
    11
Lady Carbury at Home
83
    12
Sir Felix in his