The years vs Phineas Finn, the Irish member

The years

Virginia Woolf

1937

The Years is a 1937 novel by Virginia Woolf, the last she published in her lifetime. It traces the history of the genteel Pargiter family from the 1880s to the "present day" of the mid-1930s.Although spanning fifty years, the novel is not epic in scope, focusing instead on the small private details of the characters' lives. Except for the first, each section takes place on a single day of its titular year, and each year is defined by a particular moment in the cycle of seasons. At the beginning of each section, and sometimes as a transition within sections, Woolf describes the changing weather all over Britain, taking in both London and countryside as if in a bird's-eye view before focusing in on her characters. Although these descriptions move across the whole of England in single paragraphs, Woolf only rarely and briefly broadens her view to the world outside Britain.

Phineas Finn, the Irish member

Anthony Trollope

1867

Phineas Redux is a novel by Anthony Trollope. It is the fourth of the "Palliser" series of novels and the sequel to the second book of the series, Phineas Finn. After the death of his Irish wife, Phineas Finn returns to London and to the House of Commons. But though drawn back apparently irresistibly, he never approaches politics with the zest of earlier days. What Trollope describes, in some of his most powerful writing, is a sad, at times almost sombre, progress towards maturity and self-wisdom. Anthony Trollope (1815-1882) was one of the most successful, prolific and respected English novelists of the Victorian era. His first major success came with The Warden (1855) - the first of six novels set in the fictional county of Barsetshire. The comic masterpiece Barchester Towers (1857) has probably become the best-known of these. His satirical novel The Way We Live Now critics acknowledge as his masterpiece.