Anthony Trollope 
The Way We Live Now 

Anthony Trollope’s 1875 novel, ‘The Way We Live Now’, is a biting satire of the wealthy and powerful in Victorian England. Augustus Melmotte, a wealthy financier moves to London and begins to gather investors for an American railway venture. When his daughter Marie takes up with the dissolute gold-digging aristocrat Felix Carbury, Melmotte steps in to block the union. Multiple subplots involving schemes to move up in society and thwart others from doing the same constitute a panorama of greed and desperation that makes The Way We Live Now Trollope’s masterpiece.