Anthony Trollope

English novelist

• Born: April 24, 1815
• Birthplace: London, England
• Died: December 6, 1882
• Place of death: London, England

In forty-seven well-crafted novels, Trollope depicted the social and political life of his times through characters involved in such institutions as the Church of England and Parliament.

Early Life

Anthony Trollope (TRAHL-uhp) was the son of the writer Frances (Fanny) Milton Trollope and Thomas Anthony Trollope, a barrister. Shortly after his birth, the family, including five older children, moved from London to a farm in Harrow-on-the-Hill, sixteen miles outside London. His father hoped to work the farm and commute to London for his law practice. He never prospered at either endeavor and lived in the hope of inheriting the fortune of a bachelor uncle, only to see him marry and start a family of his own late in life. This disappointment would later inspire Anthony Trollope to create fictional characters who feel they have been treated harshly by life.

Anthony began his education at Harrow in 1823 but was brutally bullied by its older students and later attended Winchester, where his older brother Tom beat him daily. Because of the family’s declining fortunes, Anthony’s mother, Fanny Trollope, decided to go to the United States in 1827, partly in order to help her son Henry set up a business in Cincinnati.

When Anthony’s father could no longer keep up his Winchester school fees, Anthony returned to Harrow as a charity student. In 1831, Fanny returned from America and wrote a travel book about her experiences. Her vivid attack on the idea of democracy made her famous overnight. Although she was already in her fifties, she published more than forty additional travel books and novels. Nevertheless, her new fame did not spare the family from having to flee to Belgium because of her husband’s debts.

Unable to acquire a scholarship to Cambridge or Oxford, Anthony obtained a clerical position with the government post office in 1834 through his mother’s influence. His father died during the following year. Anthony had been a generally poor student during his school days, but he now spent his evenings reading the great works of English literature. He hated his post office work and, after a serious illness in 1840, decided he had to change his life. In 1841, he was posted to Ireland as an inspector of postmasters’ accounts and lived there on and off through the next seventeen years.

Life’s Work

In 1842, when Trollope was twenty-seven, he met twenty-year-old Rose Heseltine, who was traveling with her family. He married her twenty months later. Their first son, Henry, was born in 1846, followed by Fred in 1847. Meanwhile, spurred by the need to prove himself and support his family, Trollope wrote his first novel, The Macdermots of Ballycloran (1847), which was inspired by his Irish experiences. Although his mother did not think him clever enough to be a novelist—unlike his brother Tom—she gave him an introduction to a publisher. After his first two published novels sold poorly, his publisher advised him to give up writing.

Trollope’s next novels, a play, and an Irish travel guide were all rejected, and he failed to achieve advancement in the post office, even after successfully promoting the use of pillar boxes for depositing mail. Trollope persevered with his writing, although it was hindered by his work, which involved extensive traveling by horseback as well as constant reassignments to new responsibilities in Ireland, England, Scotland, Wales, and even the Channel Islands.

Trollope’s published his next major novel, The Warden , in 1855. Inspired by a new posting in England’s West Country and his familiarity with the clerical life through several relatives, this first of Trollope’s Barchester tales used the power struggles of a group of clergymen to satirize gently the political reformers of the day. Subsequent Barchester novels also employ ecclesiastical settlings as microcosms of much larger social and political issues. Although The Warden is now considered a classic, it sold poorly, and his publisher rejected its sequel, Barchester Towers (1857).

Trollope’s third Barchester novel, Doctor Thorne (1858), was his first success and began his long associations with the publisher Chapman & Hall and with Mudie’s Select Library, a famous subscription library whose book selections were central to literary success in Victorian London. As critics became aware of Anthony Trollope as something more than merely Fanny Trollope’s son, they complained about his voluminous output, which continued at a rate of at least one book a year until his death.

This new success allowed Trollope and his family to travel to the West Indies, which became the inspiration for his most highly regarded travel book, The West Indies and the Spanish Main (1859), and to New York. Upon their return to England, they purchased Waltham House in Waltham Cross, their first permanent home. Trollope began contributing stories and essays to such leading periodicals as Cornhill Magazine. After the success of Framley Parsonage (1860-1861), he was considered the star among the Cornhill contributors. He also became a friend of other literary figures, such as Robert Browning, George Eliot, John Everett Millais, and William Makepeace Thackeray, as well as the Prince of Wales.

Trollope was a florid-faced, cigar-smoking, heavy-drinking, and often loud man whom many people found vulgar and annoying. However, his boisterousness and lack of physical charms did not keep him from developing a platonic relationship with Kate Field, whom he met at his brother Tom’s house in Florence in 1860. An attractive twenty-two-year-old American actor and writer, Field is best known for her friendships with English writers and her promotion of Alexander Graham Bell’s new invention, the telephone. Trollope and Field remained devoted friends until his death, despite his lack of sympathy for her feminist views. Meanwhile, his long-delayed literary success and his new friendships gave him a sense of belonging for the first time, even though he suffered from bouts of depression. He wondered how his life might have been different if he had married someone like Kate.

In addition to his Barchester novels, Trollope is also known for the Palliser series, which begins with Can You Forgive Her? (1864-1865) and features the rising politician Plantagenet Palliser, his headstrong wife, Lady Glencora, and the impulsive Irish politician Phineas Finn. Trollope used this series of novels to satirize contemporary politics more openly than in his Barchester novels. Sympathetic to the Irish cause, he was perturbed by the British government’s moribund policies toward Ireland. Although he was a liberal, like his fictional Palliser, he had the conservative views of the English gentleman he aspired to be. As with his mother, his travels in America introduced him to the notion of the “tyranny of democracy.”

Trollope also created several outstanding non-series novels. He Knew He Was Right (1868-1869), presenting a young husband consumed by an irrational jealousy, is perhaps his most psychological work. The Way We Live Now (1875), depicting the fall of a ruthless financier, is his most complex satire, looking at moral and spiritual bankruptcy in several strata of society.

Trollope finally resigned from the post office in 1867, by which time he was earning much more money from his writings than from his job. He was also distressed at he continued lack of advancement, despite having made such contributions as organizing London into postal districts. In 1868, he stood for a seat in Parliament representing Beverley but finished last. During his election campaign, he was a passionate debater on the issue of fox hunting, which was one of his greatest pleasures.

In 1876, Trollope hurried to finish his autobiography because he believed that death was near. However, he lived to write fourteen more books, including a biography of William Makepeace Thackeray. He died in London on December 6, 1882, a few days after suffering a stroke. He was sixty-seven years old at the time of his death. His wife, Rose, lived until 1917.

Significance

In addition to creating a large body of work that continues to be read and enjoyed, Trollope stands out from other Victorian writers, notably Charles Dickens, by striving to create realistic and well-rounded characters. For example, his Palliser and Lady Glencora display credible mixtures of good and bad qualities, strengths and weaknesses. Trollope is especially notable for making even his villains sympathetic. His unscrupulous adventurer Ferdinand Lopez, in The Prime Minister (1875-1876), uses everyone with whom he comes into contact, yet he sincerely loves his wife, even though he has married her for the wrong reasons. Thus, Lopez’s suicide comes as a jolt to readers. Despite his aversion to Field’s feminism and perhaps inspired by her, Trollope created several strong and independent female characters. For example, in Phineas Redux (1873-1874), Madame Max Goesler is so determined to have Finn that she proposes marriage to the hesitant politician herself.

Trollope is also notable for his creative energy and his devotion to his craft. Always up at 5:30 a.m., he wrote for three hours before breakfast and leaving for his post office duties. Given that he worked at a full-time job through most of his writing career, his literary productivity is amazing. He would frequently begin a new novelthe day after completing another.

Trollope’s contemporary reputation began to wane somewhat after his death because of the relatively weak quality of his final books, but his vivid characters and his acute social commentary were rediscovered in the twentieth century. A number of biographies, critical evaluations, and televised dramatizations of his novels have helped keep his works before the public.

Trollope’s Novels

1847

• The Macdermots of Ballycloran

1848

• The Kellys and the O Kellys

1855-1867

• Barchester Novels (*)

1855

• The Warden*

1857

• Barchester Towers*

1858

• The Three Clerks

1858

• Doctor Thorne*

1859

• The Bertrams

1860

• Castle Richmond

1860-1861

• Framley Parsonage*

1861-1862

• Orley Farm

1862-1864

• The Small House at Allington*

1863

• Rachel Ray

1864-1865

• Can You Forgive Her?

1865

• Miss Mackenzie

1865-1866

• The Belton Estate

1866-1867

• The Claverings

1867

• The Last Chronicle of Barset*

1867-1869

• Phineas Finn: The Irish Member

1868-1869

• He Knew He Was Right

1869-1870

• The Vicar of Bulhampton

1871-1873

• The Eustace Diamonds

1873-1874

• Phineas Redux

1874-1875

• The Way We Live Now

1875-1876

• The Prime Minister

1876-1877

• The American Senator

1877-1878

• Is He Popenjoy?

1878-1879

• John Caldigate

1879-1880

• The Duke’s Children

1880

• Dr. Wortle’s School

1881

• Ayala’s Angel

1881-1882

• The Fixed Period

1882-1883

• The Landleaguers

1882-1883

• Mr. Scarborough’s Family

Bibliography

Durey, Jill Felicity. Trollope and the Church of England. Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2002. Considers the treatment of ninety-seven clerical characters in Trollope’s fiction.

Glendinning, Victoria. Anthony Trollope. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1993. This first biography to view Trollope from a woman’s perspective shows the influence of his mother, Fanny; his wife, Rose; and Kate Field on his writing.

Marwick, Margaret. Trollope and Women. London: Hambledon Press, 1997. Discussing the treatment of women in thirty of Trollope’s novels, Marwick finds subtle references to their sexual desires.

Nardin, Jane. Trollope and Victorian Moral Philosophy. Athens: Ohio University Press, 1996. Examines Trollope’s combination of skepticism and moral principle.

Sadleir, Michael. Trollope: A Commentary. London: Constable, 1927. The first penetrating study of Anthony Trollope based in part upon interviews with his son Henry Trollope.

Super, R. H. Trollope in the Post Office. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1981. Most detailed account of Trollope’s career in the government post office.

Trollope, Anthony. An Autobiography. Edinburgh: Blackwood, 1883. Autobiography that emphasizes Trollope’s working habits.

Turner, Mark W. Trollope and the Magazines: Gendered Issues in Mid-Victorian Britain. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2000. This analysis of Trollope’s contributions to periodicals considers their demographics.