The Odd Couple: Anthony Trollope and Henry James

Abstract

"The Odd Couple: Anthony Trollope and Henry James" reads the two authors as a literary version of the famous television odd couple, with James a fastidious Felix Unger reacting with disgust but also attraction to Trollope, a self-consciously messy and vulgar Oscar Madison. James's disgust is articulated most powerfully in his early reviews of Trollope, but the terms of those reviews and the details of James's novels suggest that he found in Trollope's The Prime Minister a touchstone against which to work out the plots of Washington Square and The Portrait of a Lady.