An invitation to produce a “Christmas story” came while Anthony Trollope was writing The Way We Live Now. Harry Heathcote was the result, fulfilling the brief, but without the “humbug” that Trollope believed marred too much writing in that genre.
Harry Heathcote is one of Trollope’s shorter novels, but still displays his sharp psychological insight into his leading characters, and his capacity to produce natural dialog. It also draws on his first-hand knowledge of his son’s experience of farming in Australia, observed during Trollope’s extended tour of the Antipodes in 1871.
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