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Reviewer: Malleus Fatuorum ( talk · contribs · count) 18:55, 2 October 2011 (UTC) reply

Lead

• "... a feud between the titular Broad Church Vicar and a Low Church nobleman". It doesn't make sense to capitalise "Vicar" but not "nobleman". I don't believe that vicar is a proper noun, and therefore it ought not to be capitalised, something that needs to be fixed throughout the article.

• "Trollope's fortunes suffered, as well, from the mode of publication". In what way did Trollope's fortunes suffer?

• "Reviews were generally less than positive". Does that mean they were negative?

• "... many reviewers and readers were unhappy about the darker tone of Trollope's post-Barchester novels". We haven't been told that this was one of Trollope's post-Barchester novels, or even what that means.

Brattle family

• "One of his daughters, Carry, is worse off yet". One of whose daughters, Sam or Jacob?

Mary Lowther

• "... dissolve their engagement by mutual consent". Do you "dissolve" engagements, rather than end them?

• "... buying out the Colonel's interest to prevent his squandering the family fortune". Buying out the Colonel's interest in what? How was he able to squander the family fortune anyway if he wasn't the baronet?

Plight of the fallen woman

• "... and attempting to keep them in ignorance would not conduce to virtue". "Conduce to virtue"?

Love and courtship

• "A recurring theme in Trollope's work was the difficulty of choosing between two suitors". Isn't it still? Why the past tense?

• "In his essay, written a few months after Trollope's death, he cited The Vicar ...". Who did, James?

• "... Captain Marrable is left as something of a cipher". Are you certain that "cipher" is the right word here?

• "To Trollope, love does not necessarily go by merit". Not quite sure what that means.

Publication history

• "... And because of these laches on his part ...". Is "laches" correct there?

Comments

Many thanks to User:Malleus Fatuorum for putting in what appears to be a fair bit of time and effort on this. I haven't been through the GA process before, so if I'm committing a Wikisolecism by responding here, please let me know and feel free to delete these remarks. I've implemented a number of the suggestions above; below are comments on some of the other questions and suggestions.

• "Trollope's fortunes suffered..." Isn't this adequately explained in the rest of the paragraph?
• "Reviews were generally less than positive..." I don't have access to the text of the reviews themselves, but the sources I've got give the impression that many reviewers felt that this wasn't up to Trollope's usual standards, but by no means a bad book. I don't get the impression that they actually panned the novel.
• "the Colonel's interest". The Colonel was the actual heir presumptive to the baronetcy, with Capt. Marrable as his heir apparent. Trollope doesn't go into the details, but there was presumably an entail of some kind at work, which would've given the Colonel a life interest in the property. Had it been the current baronet's to dispose of by will, of course, it wouldn't have been necessary to buy out the Colonel.
• "conduce". Merriam-Webster online acknowledges the word.
• "laches". Yes; and not in the legal sense, so I didn't Wikilink the term. For what it's worth, Trollope also used it in this sense of negligence or culpable laxity in The Last Chronicle of Barset ( Chapter 18, "The Bishop of Barchester is Crushed").

-- Ammodramus ( talk) 18:12, 3 October 2011 (UTC) reply

OK, I'll buy that. I've never read the book, but I'm presuming it's written as a third-person narrative? It would be nice to explain how it's written as a sentence at the end of the first Plot summary sub-section, to give more of a feel for the novel itself. Apart from that, if you're ever thinking of taking this to FAC I think you'd probably need to add a genre/style section, but I don't think that's necessary to meet the GA criteria. So I'm quite happy now to close the review and list this article as a GA. Congratulations. Malleus Fatuorum 20:48, 3 October 2011 (UTC) reply