Recommendations
Books Like The Eustace Diamonds
Best books to read after The Eustace Diamonds by Anthony Trollope
Anthony Trollope's most accessible Palliser novel (1871-73) is organized around the thoroughly dishonest, thoroughly entertaining Lizzie Eustace and the £10,000 diamond necklace everyone wants from her. These recommendations extend the experience through Trollope's other novels, through Victorian sensation fiction, and through the tradition of the glamorous unreliable heroine.
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Buy on AmazonVanity Fair
by William Makepeace Thackeray
The most obvious comparison Trollope himself invited — Becky Sharp's beauty-and-calculation strategy for surviving in a world that would otherwise exclude her is Lizzie Eustace's strategy too; reading Becky and Lizzie together shows how the calculating heroine evolved from Thackeray's satirical irony to Trollope's psychological precision.
- 2
Buy on AmazonThe Woman in White
by Wilkie Collins
Collins's sensation novel is the genre that The Eustace Diamonds participates in — the stolen-and-hidden-document mystery plot, the villain who appears in society with false credentials, the detective subplot organized around what was actually taken; Collins perfected the form that Trollope applied to his social comedy.
- 3
Buy on AmazonPhineas Redux
by Anthony Trollope
The fourth Palliser novel — Lizzie Eustace reappears in Phineas Redux, still causing trouble with her unreliable testimony in the murder trial; reading the two novels together gives the fullest portrait of what Lizzie was and how her dishonesty rippled through the Palliser social world.
- 4
Buy on AmazonThe Prime Minister
by Anthony Trollope
The fifth Palliser novel — the contrast between Lopez's opportunism and Palliser's integrity develops the same social analysis that the contrast between Lizzie and Frank Greystock established in The Eustace Diamonds; reading both shows Trollope's consistent interest in the collision between the principled and the unscrupulous.
- 5
Buy on AmazonThe Portrait of a Lady
by Henry James
James's American heroine Isabel Archer is the serious literary response to the type of woman Lizzie Eustace embodies — where Lizzie uses her attractiveness cynically and without self-knowledge, Isabel has the intelligence to see herself accurately and the tragedy of being unable to escape the consequences of her errors.
- 6
Buy on AmazonHe Knew He Was Right
by Anthony Trollope
Trollope's darkest novel, written two years before The Eustace Diamonds — the contrast between the two shows the full range of his imagination; where Lizzie's dishonesty is comic and eventually harmless, Louis Trevelyan's jealousy is tragic and eventually fatal; Trollope using the same social analysis in completely different registers.
- 7
Buy on AmazonThe Way We Live Now
by Anthony Trollope
Trollope's great satire of financial fraud — Melmotte's social credit built entirely on apparent wealth parallels Lizzie Eustace's social credit built entirely on apparent virtue; the two novels together define Trollope's analysis of how Victorian society rewards presentation over substance.
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Buy on AmazonCan You Forgive Her?
by Anthony Trollope
The first Palliser novel — Alice Vavasor's romantic indecision is the most direct predecessor to the female protagonist problem that Lizzie Eustace represents in its darkest comic form; reading both novels shows how Trollope developed his interest in women who are not conventionally virtuous but who command reader sympathy nonetheless.
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