Scholar (Spring 1991), 1811 Q St. N.W., Washington, D.C.
20009.
The financier was one of the large figures of the 19th-century novel. In his savage sat- ire, The Way We Live Now (1874-75), for example, Anthony Trollope tells of the sud- den rise of financial speculator Augustus
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Melmotte, a "hollow vulgar fraud" whom a corrupt society chooses to venerate, and of his fall after being unmasked at the height of his success. Today, observes Princeton historian James,...