The autumn edition of ALSo, the newsletter of the Alliance of Literary Societies (ALS), offers an enjoyable mixture of literary discoveries, news from member societies and reflections on the role literary societies play in keeping authors and their works alive.

This edition marks a change at the ALS, with Dominic Edwardes, Chair of the Trollope Society, succeeding Marty Ross as Chair. In a short introductory article, Dominic reflects on the value of literary societies learning from one another and sharing their experience.

Trollope features elsewhere in the magazine, particularly in a report on the ALS’s “Dipping Your Toes” event. Representatives of ten societies were each invited to recommend the best place to begin with their chosen author. Speaking for the Trollope Society, Dominic selected Barchester Towers. Although it is not the first of the Chronicles of Barsetshire, the novel stands alone and introduces readers to the Cathedral Close, its rivalries and alliances, and Trollope’s remarkable powers of characterisation. It also offers a particularly good example of the distinctive relationship Trollope establishes with his readers.

Trollope Society member Theresa Best used the same event to recommend Kirsteen by Margaret Oliphant. She describes it as a strikingly modern and feminist novel about a young Scottish woman determined to make her own way in life. Other recommendations introduce readers to works by or connected with Angela Thirkell, Charles Dickens, Samuel Johnson, Coleridge, John Clare, Rudyard Kipling and Norman Nicholson.

The Society makes another appearance in “As Others See Us”, an entertaining look at how literary societies have been portrayed in the press. An article published in 1990 noted that the Trollope Society had been founded only three years earlier, in 1987, partly in response to the difficulty of obtaining many of Trollope’s works. It also described a black tie Society dinner at the Reform Club and offered some distinctly mischievous observations about the Society and its membership.

Davidson stresses that apart from the obvious eminences – Dickens, Johnson, Austen, Brontës – the founding of most literary societies is recent. He cites the Trollope Society in 1987: ‘It infuriates them that, whereas every word Dickens wrote can still be bought for ready cash, half the Trollope oeuvre is out of print.’

Elsewhere, Antoinette Fawcett explores the connections between Norman Nicholson and other writers celebrated by ALS members. The edition also includes articles on Francis Brett Young’s novel The Iron Age, the enduring appeal of Elinor Brent-Dyer’s Chalet School books, and writer and early environmentalist John Moore.

With contributions covering authors from across different periods and literary traditions, the autumn edition demonstrates one of the great pleasures of belonging to the ALS: the opportunity to move beyond the writers we already know and discover someone new.

Read the autumn 2026 edition of ALSo

The magazine also includes details of the Alliance of Literary Societies Fair, a free celebration of books, authors and readers at the Birmingham and Midland Institute on Saturday 3 October.