John Ruskin and Karl Marx – two heterodox economic thinkers writing in England in the 1860s – both considered production, circulation, and exchange in relation to the natural environment. After first discussing the imbrication of the economic and the ecological in their work, this chapter turns to George Eliot’s Felix Holt [GK19](1866) and Anthony Trollope’s Orley Farm [GK20](1861–62) to explore points of intersection between heterodox economic thought and literary realism. Focusing on soil fertility, an issue that evokes the uses of water, soil, and manure in service of capitalism, the chapter shows that Eliot and Trollope trace the ways in which ownership, labor, or trade transforms humans’ relations to animals, plants, and landscapes. Heterodox economic thought and literary realism in the 1860s took into account historical dimensions of the natural world, especially its economic involvement.

Throughout his writing life, Anthony Trollope denied that his style, or any writer’s style, was worthy of much notice.  Despite the much-vaunted plainness of Trollope’s prose, this chapter shows that his style, apparently designed to erase itself, becomes the means of involving readers as active participants in unstable processes of moral and political adjudication. Building on recent accounts that have considered the ethics of prose style, the chapter suggests that Trollope’s style fosters a degree of moral ambivalence. His style is influenced by the idea of gentlemanly ease and is at the same time brought into rivalry with the professional lawyer. Although in novels such as Orley Farm (1861) Trollope (unreasonably) railed against lawyers willing to give a good defence to scoundrels, his own ‘elusive style’ is not as strident in judgement as such invective might lead us to expect.