Anthony Trollope
Anthony Trollope (1815—1882) was an English novelist whose popular success concealed until long after his death the nature and extent of his literary merit. In his own time, Trollope’s novels were as popular with the common reader as they were admired by George Eliot, Henry James, George Bernard Shaw and Nathaniel Hawthorne. Today, he is probably the most widely read and loved nineteenth century English Novelists after Dickens and Jane Austen.
Trollope grew up as the son of a sometime scholar, barrister, and failed gentleman farmer. He was unhappy at the great public schools of Winchester and Harrow. Adolescent awkwardness continued until well into his 20s. The years 1834–41 he spent miserably as a junior clerk in the General Post Office, but he was then transferred as a postal surveyor to Ireland, where he began to enjoy a social life. In 1844 he married Rose Heseltine, an Englishwoman, and set up house at Clonmel, in Tipperary. He then embarked upon a literary career that leaves a dominant impression of immense energy and versatility.
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Among the best-known of his novels are two series of six novels each collectively known as the Chronicles of Barsetshire and the Palliser novels, as well as his longest novel, The Way We Live Now. His novels address political, social, and gender issues and other topical matters.
A series of books set in the imaginary English county of Barsetshire remains his best loved and most famous work, but he also wrote convincing novels of political life as well as studies that show great psychological penetration. One of his greatest strengths was a steady, consistent vision of the social structures of Victorian England, which he re-created in his books with unusual solidity. The Barsetshire novels excel in memorable characters, and they exude the atmosphere of the cathedral community and of the landed aristocracy.
Trollope’s other major series, the Palliser novels, which overlap with the Barsetshire novels, concerned itself with politics, with the wealthy, industrious Plantagenet Palliser (later Duke of Omnium) and his delightfully spontaneous, even richer wife Lady Glencora featured prominently. However, as with the Barsetshire series, many other well-developed characters populated each novel and in one, The Eustace Diamonds, the Pallisers play only a small role.
Trollope published four novels about Ireland. Two were written during the Great Famine, while the third deals with the famine as a theme (The Macdermots of Ballycloran, The Kellys and the O’Kellys, and Castle Richmond, respectively). The Macdermots of Ballycloran was written while he was staying in the village of Drumsna, County Leitrim. The Kellys and the O’Kellys (1848) is a humorous comparison of the romantic pursuits of the landed gentry (Francis O’Kelly, Lord Ballindine) and his Catholic tenant (Martin Kelly). Two short stories deal with Ireland (“The O’Conors of Castle Conor, County Mayo” and “Father Giles of Ballymoy” Some critics argue that these works seek to unify an Irish and British identity, instead of viewing the two as distinct. Even as an Englishman in Ireland, Trollope was still able to attain what he saw as essential to being an “Irish writer”: possessed, obsessed, and “mauled” by Ireland.
Trollope’s popularity and critical success diminished in his later years, but he continued to write prolifically, and some of his later novels have acquired a good reputation. In particular, critics, who concur that the book was not popular when published, generally acknowledge the sweeping satire The Way We Live Now (1875) as his masterpiece. In all, Trollope wrote 47 novels, 42 short stories, and five travel books, as well as nonfiction books titled Thackeray (1879) and Lord Palmerston (1882).
In 1859 Trollope moved back to London, resigning from the civil service in 1867 and unsuccessfully standing as a Liberal parliamentary candidate in 1868. Before then, however, he had produced some 18 novels apart from the Barsetshire group. He wrote mainly before breakfast at a fixed rate of 1,000 words an hour. Outstanding among works of that period were Orley Farm (serially, 1861–62; 1862), which made use of the traditional plot of a disputed will, and Can You Forgive Her? (serially, 1864–65; 1865), the first of his political novels, which introduced Plantagenet Palliser, later duke of Omnium, whose saga was to stretch over many volumes down to The Duke’s Children (serially, 1879–80; 1880), a subtle study of the dangers and difficulties of marriage. In the political novels Trollope is less concerned with political ideas than with the practical working of the system—with the mechanics of power.
Discover Trollope – A guide to Britain’s celebrated Victorian author.
Starting in 1989 The Folio Society began publishing the first complete edition of Trollope’s novels and continued at the rate of several per year until all 47 novels had been published.
This superb uniformly bound complete collection is generally available on my website together with the edition that was later produced by the Folio Society for the Trollope Society.
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