The American Senator

“I am, I trust, beginning to understand something of the mode of thinking of this very peculiar people.”

So says the industrious Mr Gotobed from Mikewa. Unflagging in his pursuit of material for a lecture on ‘The Irrationality of Englishmen’, the Senator tramples roughshod over the feelings of his host and of much of the population of Dillsborough.

Equally energetically, the increasingly desperate Arabella Trefoil pursues her prey to the altar.

Trollope has set his novel during the hunting season in an English country village – a metaphor which is sometimes all too appropriate. Yet beneath the comedy of manners some sharp criticism of English politics is articulated. And a love story gradually emerges, made all the more poignant by the despair of a rejected suitor, as the winter turns to spring.

The American Senator was serialised in Temple Bar from May 1876 to July 1877 and appeared in novel form in June 1877.