The Way We Live Now is a satirical novel by Anthony Trollope, published in London in 1875 after first appearing in serialised form. It is one of the last significant Victorian novels to have been published in monthly parts. The novel is Trollope's longest, comprising 100 chapters, and is particularly rich in sub-plot. It was inspired by the financial scandals of the early 1870s; Trollope had just returned to England from abroad, and was appalled by the greed and dishonesty those scandals exposed. This novel was his rebuke. It dramatised how such greed and dishonesty pervaded the commercial, political, moral, and intellectual life of that era. Writing and publication Trollope began writing The Way We Live Now on 1 May 1873, five months after returning from an extended trip to Australia and New Zealand. He paused work in order to write the shorter novel Harry Heathcote of Gangoil, a Christmas novel he had already promised his publisher, but he resumed work on The Way We Live Now by July. It was completed on 22 December 1873, and the first of twenty monthly installments was published by Chapman & Hall beginning in February 1874. Chapman & Hall had purchased the rights for both the serialisation and the full novel for £3,000. However, the serialisation sold badly, prompting the publisher to release the full novel in a two volume form in June 1875, four months before the serialisation was set to finish. The two volume first editions were large octavos occupied by the unsold pages from the serialised printings. As outlined in Trollope's notes, the original concept for The Way We Live Now centred on Lady Carbury as the main character (Trollope referred to it as the "Carbury novel"). It was therefore meant to be more of a satire of the literary world in which Lady Carbury circulates, with subplots involving Lady Carbury's children (the outline for the Hetta Carbury-Paul Montague-Roger Carbury love triangle is present from the early notes). Trollope envisioned Melmotte, originally intended to be a minor character, first as an American, then later as a Frenchman. Several real-life figures have been proposed as the inspiration for Augustus Melmotte: the French financier Charles Lefevre, as well as the Irish swindler John Sadlier, who like Melmotte committed suicide with prussic acid when his schemes unravelled. Another suggested inspiration for Melmotte is 'King' Hudson, a railway speculator in the 1840s whose prodigious