Anthony Trollope was one of the most successful, prolific and respected English novelists of the Victorian era. He described realistically Victorian world. Trollope's best known stories were set in the imaginary English county of Barsetshire.
Background
Anthony Trollope, novelist, was the fourth son of Thomas Anthony Trollope, a barrister, and Frances (Milton) Trollope. Born at 6 Keppel Street, Bloomsbury, London, the infant was taken at the age of one year, to a house called Julians, near Harrow. The father was gloomy, ill-tempered, and improvident: his law practice gradually fell away; an expected inheritance was cut off; and the family fortunes sank lower and lower each year.
Education
In 1822 Anthony became a day-boy at Harrow School. Anthony attended Harrow School as a free day pupil for three years from the age of seven. In 1825 he was transferred to Arthur Drury's private school at Sunbury; and in 1827 he went to his father's old school, Winchester. Finally, in the spring of 1830, he went back to Harrow.
He followed his father and two older brothers to Winchester College, where he remained for three years. Attempts at University scholarships were abortive. He was a large, awkward, uncouth boy, ill-clad and often dirty, and felt an unhappy outcast among the young aristocrats and plutocrats he met at these famous schools.
Career
Trollope joined at the age of 19 the post office, where he worked as a clerk. In 1841, at the age of 26, he became a postal surveyor in Ireland. Trollope spent in this work 33 years and used later his experiences in many novels. After marrying Rose Heseltine in 1844, Trollope set up a house at Clonmel and started his literary career. Trollope began to write in his spare time to earn extra money. In 1859 he moved back to London and resigned from the civil service in 1867. His election campaign as a Liberal parliamentary candidate was unsuccessful, but 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. In 1871-72 he travelled to Australia and New Zealand, again to Australia in 1875, and to South Africa in 1877. Trollope regularly produced 1000 words an hour before breakfast - his page contained 250 words.
Trollope lived in London from 1872 and at Harting Grange, Sussex, until 1882. He had a private library of 5,000 volumes, which was dearer to him "even than the horses." Trollope died in London on December 6, 1882. His last novel, Mr. Scarborough's Family, was published posthumously in 1883. During the Second World War Trollope's novels were read primarily as romances but from the 1970s, critical revaluation of the author's contribution to the history of the novel has taken place, and Trollope's reputation as a moralist has risen greatly. However, still in the 1990s, his works were dismissed in the London Sunday Telegraph as overrated and flat.
Achievements
Works
book
The Warden
Barchester Towers
comedy
The Noble Jilt
Religion
He seems to have first been an adherent of High Church Anglicanism. The High Church, often characterized as "high and dry" to Trollope's annoyance, placed great emphasis on a restrained style of worship, the Sacraments, and the Prayer Book. Trollope's parents were proponents of maintaining High Church traditions, and Trollope's tutor at Harrow, Harry Drury, was arguably influential in forming Trollope's allegiance to the High Church.
Politics
Trollope considered himself to be a conservative liberal, and used his characters to expound his political beliefs.
Views
Quotations:
- Let the toryism of the Tory be ever so strong it is his destiny to carry out the purposes of his opponents.
- 'In politics one should always look forward,' he said, as he held up to the light the glass of old port which he was about to sip; 'in real life it is better to look back, if one has anything to look back at.'
- There are certain things of which opposition members of Parliament complain loudly; and there are certain other things as to which they are silent. The line between these things is well known.
Connections
In 1844 Trollope married Rose Heseltine and they had two sons, Henry (b.1846) and Frederick (b.1847).