The Way We Live Now

The Way We Live Now is a satirical and political novel by the English writer Anthony Trollope, published in 1875 after first appearing in monthly parts. It is one of the last important Victorian novels to be issued in that form, and it runs to a hundred chapters.

Trollope began writing it in May 1873, not long after returning from an extended stay in Australia and New Zealand. What he had come back to was a series of financial scandals that had exposed the greed and dishonesty of the period, and the novel was written as his response to them.

The central figure is Augustus Melmotte, a financier whose origins are vague and whose wealth is taken on trust by almost everyone who meets him. Around him the book assembles a large cast of people whose fortunes depend on his: aristocrats with money problems, a young man in love with Melmotte's daughter, a writer who cannot tell the truth about his own circumstances, and a member of Parliament who sees more clearly than he says. Trollope shows how a reputation for money can buy position, and what happens when the claims behind it are tested.