Is Trollope the most "realistic" novelist of all?

Some of the print editions of Trollope (I'm reading Framley Parsonage on an ibook) include a list of all the characters as an appendix, and that would be really helpful because ... there are so many! English-language readers sometimes have trouble with the great Russians because of the long names and the many unusual name shortenings, but I think Trollope is just as difficult, in part because of the vast array of his characters, all of whom bear an almost equal load of the plot weight, so to speak. So often I find myself mid-novel confronted w/ a character who sounds vaguely familiar to me but whom I just can't place - much like in life, sometimes! Who the hell is Gisela Grantley? Or Mrs. Crawley? Where did they come from and how did they find their way into this novel? And then, gradually, I seem to remember them - much as in life, really. This is another aspect of Trollope's realism, I would say - the way in which our social life beyond the immediate family consists of a vast, shifting network of friend, neighbors, and relationships; our lives are not "plotted out" and "bound" like a book. To enter into a Trollope novel - or even more so, into a set of Trollope novels such as the Barchester novels or the Palliser novels - is to enter into a community of lives, and in a sense his work is closer to realism than than of any other writer of his time. 

  

To order a copy of "25 Posts from Elliot's Reading: Selections from the first 2,500 blog entries," click here.