Anthony Trollope Biography and List of Works

Popular British author, who realistically describes the Victorian world. In his autobiography (1883) Trollope wrote, that the novelist's task is "to make his readers so intimately acquainted with his characters that the creation of his brain should be to them speaking, moving, living, human creatures." Over the last three decades, critical revaluation of the author's contribution to the history of the novel has taken place, and his reputation as a moralist has risen greatly. Trollope is notable for having developed the chronicle form of fiction. His best-known stories were set in the imaginary English county of Barsetshire.

"It is a comfortable feeling to know that you stand on your own ground. Land is about the only thing that can't fly away."
(from The Last Chronicle of Barset, 1867)

Anthony Trollope was born in London. His father, a fellow of New College, Oxford, failed both as a lawyer and as a farmer. The family's poverty made Trollope miserable and uncomfortable in the rigid public social hierarchy of Harrow and Winchester. Sometimes his parents could not afford to pay their son's school fees. After financial troubles the family moved to Belgium, but returned with mother and children when Trollope's father died. His mother, Frances Trollope (1780-1863), took her three youngest children to America to assist in the founding of the city of New Harmony, Memphis. The venture failed and she travelled for the next fifteen months in America. In 1832, back in England, she published Domestic Manners of the Americans, which gained success, and she could support her family through her writing.

At the age of 19 Trollope joined the post office, where he worked as a clerk. In 1841, at the age of 26, he became a postal surveyor in Ireland, and later used his experiences in many of his novels. Trollope worked for the post office for 33 years. After marrying Rose Heseltine in 1844, Trollope set up a house at Clonmel and started his literary career. Soon after marrying Trollope began writing in his spare time to earn extra money. On Post Office business he travelled in Egypt, the West Indies, and the United States, and by the end of his professional career Trollope had became a successful civil servant. Among his achievements is the introduction of the red British mailboxes for letters, known as pillar-boxes, or post-boxes. Before the invention of mailboxes one had to go to the Post Office to post a letter.

In 1859 he moved back to London and in 1867 resigned from the civil service. His election campaign as a Liberal parliamentary candidate was unsuccessful, but in about 1869 Trollope began his creative late period, publishing psychological and sharply satirical novels. Between the years 1867 and 1870 he edited the St Paul's Magazine.

Trollope regularly produced 1000 words an hour before breakfast. His first book, THE MACDERMOTS OF BALLYCLORAN, was published in 1847. The powerful story depicts a doomed Irish family. But it was not until his fourth novel, THE WARDEN (1855), set in the imaginary English county Barsetshire, that Trollope established his reputation as a writer. It tells the tale of a clergyman whose gentle life is upset when he is accused of misusing money meant for the old people's home he looks after. It was followed by five popular sequels, BARCHESTER TOWERS (1857), DOCTOR THORNE (1858), FRAMLEY PARSONAGE (1861), THE SMALL HOUSE AT ALLINGTON (1964), and THE LAST CHRONICLE OF BARSET (1967), which the author considered his finest novel. The mid-Victorian reading public received the series with its realistic presentation of a middle-class domestic relationship with enthusiasm. With humour and gentle satire, the author describes the stories of ordinary men and women with ordinary human weaknesses.

The Palliser series centres on an invented family of nobles, and illustrates Trollopes' concern with political issues and the mechanics of power. The series begins in 1864 with the novel CAN YOU FORGIVE HER? It continues with PHINEAS FINN (1869), THE EUSTACE DIAMONDS (1873), PHINEAS REDUX (1876), THE PRIME MINISTER (1876), and THE DUKE'S CHILDREN (1880). One of the central characters, Plantagenet Palliser (later Lord Omnium), first appeared in The Small House at Allington. Trollope broadened the presentation of the dry, ambitious politician and his brilliant wife Glencora, and later considered that they were the two characters on which his posthumous reputation would rest.

The Barset novels and Palliser series took over twenty years of Trollope's writing life to complete. His popularity was at its peak during the 1860s. Readers especially admired his detailed description of social life and the vivid psychological portraits of his characters. Trollope published some 40 novels, short stories, travel books, and essays. As a writer his work continued in a more realistic vein the literary tradition on William Thackeray, of whom he wrote a study in 1879. Trollope died in London on December 6, 1882. His last novel, MR. SCARBOROUGH'S FAMILY, was published posthumously in 1883.

"Needless to deny that the normal London plumber is a dishonest man. We do not even allow ourselves to think so. That question, as to the dishonesty of mankind generally, is one that disturbs us greatly; - whether a man in all grades of life will by degrees train his honesty to suit his own book, so that the course of life which he shall bring himself to regard as soundly honest shall, if known to his neighbours, subject him to their reproof. We own to a doubt whether the honesty of a bishop would shine bright as the morning star to the submissive ladies who now worship him, if the theory of life upon which he lives were understood by them in all its bearings."
(The 'Plumber', 1880)

Note I: Angela Margaret Thirkell, writer and a cousin of Rudyard Kipling (1890-1961), continued the Bersetshire series in more than 30 novels, dealing with the descendants of characters from Trollope's books. Note II: Anthony Trollope's distant relation Joanna Trollope has published several bestsellers. Her books have sold more than 6 million copies around the world. Her latest novel, Marrying the Mistress (2000) depicts a 62-year-old judge who wants to leave his wife and marry his young barrister mistress. - Anthony Trollope's brother Thomas Adolphus Trollope (1810-92) wrote some 60 volumes of travel writing, history and fiction.

For further reading: Anthony Trollope by Bradford A. Booth (1958); The Critical Heritage, ed. by D.A. Smalley (1969); The Moral Trollope by Ruth ApRoberts (1971); The Novels of Anthony Trollope by James Kincaid (1977); The Novel-Machine by Walter M. Kendrick (1980); Trollope and Comic Pleasure by Christopher Herbert (1987); He Knew She Was Right by Jane Nardin (1989); Anthony Trollope by Richard Mullen (1990); Anthony Trollope and His Contemporaries by David Skilton (1996)

THE MACDERMOTS OF BALLYCLORAN, (1847)