Anthony Trollope

By Graham Handley

Known for the imaginary worlds and characters he created in the Barsetshire and Palliser series, Anthony Trollope remains one of the most popular of Victorian novelists. This biography explores his life and literary career, along with his revitalization of postal services in the UK and abroad.

• Language: English
• Publisher: The History Press
• Release date: Sep 16, 2011
• ISBN: 9780752470757

Book preview

POCKET BIOGRAPHIES

Anthony

Trollope

GRAHAM HANDLEY

First published in 1999

The History Press

The Mill, Brimscombe Port

Stroud, Gloucestershire, GL5 2QG

www.thehistorypress.co.uk

This ebook edition first published in 2011

All rights reserved

© Graham Handley, 1999, 2011

The right of Graham Handley, to be identified as the Author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyrights, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

This ebook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorised distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author’s and publisher’s rights, and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly.

EPUB ISBN 978 0 7524 7075 7

MOBI ISBN 978 0 7524 7076 4

Original typesetting by The History Press

To Lily Butcher, with love

CONTENTS

List of Illustrations

Acknowledgements & Further Reading

Chronology

Introduction

1   Trials and Tribulations

2   A Real Change

3   Home and Away

4   Fame and Considerable Fortune

5   Politics and After

6   The Ways He Lived Then

Conclusion

Notes and References

Bibliography

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

Between pp. 44 and 45

1  Study of Anthony Trollope at about the time he resigned from the Post Office, 1867

2  Frances Trollope, painted by Auguste Hervieu, 1832

3  Mrs Trollope’s house at Hadley, near Barnet

4  Family group at Tom Trollope’s home in Florence, about 1860

5  General Post Office, St Martin’s le Grand, 1852

6  Improvements in the postal service, 1863

7  Composite photograph of 1876, showing Anthony with some of his distinguished contemporaries

8  Drawing of Anthony by the celebrated cartoonist ‘Spy’, Vanity Fair, 1873

9  Cover for The Last Chronicle of Barset

10  The cover for Part XI of The Way We Live Now

11  The frontispiece for Anthony’s novel, Orley Farm, by Millais

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS & FURTHER READING

Anyone writing on Anthony Trollope today has full resources on which to draw. In the last decade or so, four distinguished and detailed biographies (by Robert Super, Richard Mullen, N. John Hall and Victoria Glendinning) have been published, each in their vivid particularities enhancing our appreciation and understanding of a major Victorian writer. I acknowledge here the benefits I derived from these in the period 1989–1993, and have referred back to notes made on them at the time of reading. I must similarly record my debt to N. John Hall’s exemplary edition of The Letters of Anthony Trollope (1983). Peter Rooke helped me with the choice of illustrations. I am grateful to my editors, Jaqueline Mitchell and Helen Gray. My greatest personal debt is to John Letts OBE, chairman of the Trollope Society, who read my manuscript and made a number of stimulating suggestions, most of which have been incorporated. The Trollope Society is flourishing here and in America, its aim of having all Trollope’s fiction in print as cased editions virtually accomplished. Scholarship and criticism matches Trollope’s own writing span, while Richard Mullen’s The Penguin Companion to Trollope (1996) and the Oxford Reader’s Companion to Trollope (1999), to which a number of contemporary Trollopians have contributed, reflect the density of interest in his work. Television productions of The Pallisers and The Barchester Chronicles in the 1970s and 1980s kept this much-loved writer in the public eye, and I recently discovered a video of one of Trollope’s best stories, ‘Malachi’s Cove’ (1987). Cassettes and readings on radio of the major novels occur regularly. I hope that the short biography which follows will contribute towards the picture of the man and his writings for readers approaching Trollope for the first time or renewing acquaintance with him. There is a very rich verbal territory to explore, and I use the metaphor deliberately to echo Trollope’s lifelong propensity for physical and mental journeyings.

CHRONOLOGY

(Publication dates given below are those of the first book issue of each of Trollope’s works. Serial/part publications are not listed).