Father Giles of Ballymoy

By Anthony Trollope

Born in London on 24th April 1815 Anthony Trollope is considered a giant of English literature. His early schooling was at Harrow and Sunbury. Here, he was often bullied due to the family’s reduced financial means. His bad tempered father seemed to be full of energy but unable to execute any idea into a regular income.

In 1834 Trollope moved with his family to Bruges in Belgium to escape the debt collectors pursuing his father. With an offer of work for the General Post Office he returned to London later that same year. The next 7 years were, by his own account, unproductive and miserable. However, in 1841 a chance to move to Ireland for the GPO availed itself and he took it.

During his long travels around Ireland he now began to write extensively often setting himself a schedule about how many words to write in a day.

In 1851 he was sent to England to organise rural delivery. In this period he began to nurture the first of the six Barsetshire novels “The Warden’ which was published in 1855.

In his prolific career he wrote 47 novels as well as many short stories and travel books.

On 6th December, 1882 he died in London and is buried at Kensal Green Cemetery in London.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Miniature Masterpiece
• Release date: May 3, 2019
• ISBN: 9781787805200

Anthony Trollope

Anthony Trollope (1815-1882) was the third son of a barrister, who ruined his family by giving up the law for farming, and an industrious mother. After attending Winchester and Harrow, Trollope scraped into the General Post Office, London, in 1834, where he worked for seven years. In 1841 he was transferred to Ireland as a surveyor's clerk, and in 1844 married and settled at Clonmel. His first two novels were devoted to Irish life; his third, La Vendée, was historical. All were failures. After a distinguished career in the GPO, for which he invented the pillar box and travelled extensively abroad, Trollope resigned in 1867, earning his living from writing instead. He led an extensive social life, from which he drew material for his many social and political novels. The idea for The Warden (1855), the first of the six Barsetshire novels, came from a visit to Salisbury Close; with it came the characters whose fortunes were explored through the succeeding volumes, of which Doctor Thorne is the third.

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Anthony Trollope – An Introduction

Born in London on 24th April 1815 Anthony Trollope is considered a giant of English literature.  His early schooling was at Harrow and Sunbury.  Here, he was often bullied due to the family’s reduced financial means.  His bad tempered father seemed to be full of energy but unable to execute any idea into a regular income.   

In 1834 Trollope moved with his family to Bruges in Belgium to escape the debt collectors pursuing his father.   With an offer of work for the General Post Office he returned to London later that same year.  The next 7 years were, by his own account, unproductive and miserable.  However, in 1841 a chance to move to Ireland for the GPO availed itself and he took it. 

During his long travels around Ireland he now began to write extensively often setting himself a schedule about how many words to write in a day.

In 1851 he was sent to England to organise rural delivery.  In this period he began to nurture the first of the six Barsetshire novels "The Warden’ which was published in 1855.   

In his prolific career he wrote 47 novels as well as many short stories and travel books.

On 6th December, 1882 he died in London and is buried at Kensal Green Cemetery in London.

Father Giles of Ballymoy

It is nearly thirty years since I, Archibald Green, first entered the little town of Ballymoy, in the west of Ireland and became acquainted with one of the honestest fellows and best Christians whom it has ever been my good fortune to know. For twenty years he and I were fast friends, though he was much my elder. As he has now been ten years beneath the sod, I may tell the story of our first meeting.

Ballymoy is a so-called town or was in the days of which I am speaking, lying close to the shores of Lough Corrib, in the county of Galway. It is on the road to no place, and, as the end of a road, has in itself nothing to attract a traveller. The scenery of Lough Corrib is grand; but the lake is very large, and the fine scenery is on the side opposite to Ballymoy, and hardly to be reached, or even seen, from that place. There is fishing, but it is lake fishing. The salmon