ABSTRACT

There are many reasons for readers of Trollope and Victorian culture to turn to the law, just as there are reasons for scholars of law and legal history to turn to Trollope. Indeed, it is probably safe to say that every one of the political, social, or cultural aspects of Trollope’s oeuvre – thematic or formal – discussed in scholarship over the years has legal manifestations, representations, consequences, or underlying structures. “The law,” writes R. D. McMaster of Trollope’s fiction, “is a sort of skeleton, underlying it, giving it shape, allowing for possibilities of action and setting limitations” (11).