Following the success of the Trollope Society’s 2026 conference, Trollope: The Law & Transgression, held at Magdalene College, Cambridge, we are delighted to present a series of online Zoom talks featuring conference speakers exploring law, morality, justice, gender, religion, inheritance, equity, and social transgression in the novels of Anthony Trollope.

A Taxonomy of Transgression in Anthony Trollope’s Novels: A Conversation

Professor Linda McClain and Claire Laporte

Trollope felt obliged to “make virtue alluring and vice ugly.” He criticized novels that confer good outcomes on bad characters. Using character outcomes as a yardstick of ethical judgments in Trollope’s world, this conversation explores a taxonomy of transgression in Trollope’s novels. In the legal realm, the novels address transgressions from outright crime (murder, embezzlement, forgery, theft, bigamy) to shady and unethical manipulations that affect the legal rights of others (suborning, lying, concealment). Trollope’s novels sketch out nonlegal norms, such as rules around gender and class.  For example, Trollope explores the propriety of cross-class marriages, but often in contexts in which class boundaries are contested. Women guilty of power-grabbing or overweening ambition—for example, mercenary marriages—often come to bad ends, as do men who transgress social norms of gentlemanly conduct. Yet, sometimes norms cross-cut each other, such as when social abhorrence toward bigamy is pitted against the power of feminine love. Outcomes in these situations reveal a hierarchy of moral principles.

Linda C. McClain is Robert Kent Professor of Law at Boston University School of Law and Co-director of the BU Program on Reproductive Justice. She writes about family law, gender and law, feminism, civil rights, and constitutional law. She has written several articles and book chapters on the novels of Anthony Trollope (two with Professor Allison Tait). She is active in the Trollope Society (UK) and Trollope Society USA. 

Claire Laporte is the President of the Trollope Society USA, a nonprofit literary society devoted to the works of Anthony Trollope. She writes essays on literature that are available at https://clairelaporte.substack.com and leads community and Trollope Society USA reading groups as part of an effort to popularize literature and create connections between community and academic readers. Claire is a former intellectual property trial lawyer. She practiced law for almost 30 years at a private law firm and finished her legal career as the Head of Intellectual Property for Ginkgo Bioworks, a publicly traded biotechnology company. Claire also provided pro bono legal services to advance marriage equality and transgender rights. Claire is also Vice-Chair of the only public hospital system in Massachusetts.

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13 May 2027 at 8pm, Professor Linda McClain and Claire Laporte – A Taxonomy of Transgression in Anthony Trollope’s Novels: A Conversation
(The previously advertised date for this meeting was 12 November 2026.)

Click here to register on Zoom to attend Trollope: The Law & Transgression Conference Series

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