When it first appeared, Tempest-Tost struck one as a pure, delightful jeu d'esprit, quite what one would expect from the typewriter of Samuel Marchbanks. A funny book. In 1958, it stands as the first of three novels about the same Ontario town of Salterton, and this makes a difference. Novelists who return repeatedly, as Trollope did, to the same place or the same broad circle of characters, achieve in time a stereoscopic depth that can be attained in no other way. Tempest-Tost can now be seen throug...