BIOGRAPHY
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. In 1822 Anthony
became a day-boy at Harrow School; 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.
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. At the end of
1827 his mother had gone to America
with the bluestocking Frances Wright and the French painter Auguste
Hervieu. Among the wildcat projects afoot at this
time was the setting up of a bazaar in Cincinnati
for the sale of English goods. The bazaar (a horrible architectural
monstrosity) was actually built, but the enterprise failed dismally and
precipitated the final ruin of the family. Sold up in April 1834, the Trollopes went to Bruges,
and were now supported by the novel-writing of Frances, who had commenced
authorship in 1832, with Domestic Manners of the Americans. Thomas
Anthony Trollope died at the end of 1835.
In the summer of 1834 Anthony
became an usher in a school at Brussels,
hoping to learn enough French and German to enable him to take up a promised
commission in an Austrian cavalry regiment. But in the autumn, by influence, he
became a junior clerk in the General Post office, London. He had seven lonely years of dingy
poverty in London, making few friends and
earning a reputation for insubordination, until his transfer in 1841 to Banagher, Ireland, as a deputy postal
surveyor, put him financially at ease and introduced him to a larger, freer,
outdoor life. His awkwardness disappeared; he took up the sport of fox-hunting
(which he followed enthusiastically until 1878); and l in June 1844 he married
Rose Heseltine, daughter of a Rotherham
bank-manager.
Trollope set himself to
discover the real reasons for Irish discontent. In the autumn of 1843 he began
work on his first novel The Macdermots of Ballycloran (published 1847). This book and The
Kellys and the O'Kellys (1848)
were of a political cast, and are to be regarded as 'prentice work. After
promotion in the Post Office and transfer to Mallow in 1845, Trollope was sent
in the spring of 1851 to the west of England on a postal mission. Here
in July 1852, he began The Warden (1855), in which he first
found his metier as the delineator of clerical life in cathedral
towns. He was in Belfast for a year from the
autumn of 1853, then in Donnybrook, near Dublin.
Further postal missions, to Egypt,
Scotland, and the West
Indies, followed in 1858-59, and in December of the latter year he settled at
Waltham Cross, some twelve miles from London,
as surveyor general in the Post Office at £800 a year.
He was now writing
persistently. A comedy, The Noble Jilt (written in 1850), was
set aside on the advice of an actor friend; but no less than ten new books were
written or writing by the time he came to Waltham Cross. Barchester Towers (May 1857)
showed him at the height of his powers, as the minute chronicler of events and
ecclesiastical politics in the imaginary cathedral-city (founded on Winchester) and in the wider county area of Barset (Somerset)
round about. The bishop's wife, Mrs. Proudie, one of
the immortals of English fiction, the slimy Mr. Slope, showed him as a
percipient and skilful master of characterization, and the whole scene and
atmosphere of normal English mid-Victorian life in country towns was set out. Framley Parsonage which
began serialization in the new Cornhill Magazine (edited by
Thackeray) on January 1, 1860, consolidated his reputation and definitely made
his name.
In October 1860, while
visiting his mother's home in Florence,
Trollope met the young American, Kate Field, who became one of his closest
friends and to whom he wrote a series of delightful letters which show the
gentler and more playful side of his nature. The next year he was in Boston with his wife, on
a postal mission, and the two met Miss Field. In 1861, too, he was elected to
the Garrick Club, which became a favourite place of resort. He was now
prosperous, famous, and sought after by publishers and literary people. His
friends included such figures as R. Monckton Milnes,
W. E. Forster, George Eliot, and G. H. Lewes. He had business dealings with
George Smith, founder of the Dictionary of National Biography and
partner in Smith, Elder (for whom he wrote, in 1865, some hunting sketches in
the new Pall Mall Gazette), and with Norman Macleod, editor of
that somewhat sanctimonious magazine, Good Words, who had to pay him
£500 for breach of contract over Rachel Ray, which Macleod found
suspect for Evangelical readers. In 1865 he sank £1,250 in the Fortnight
Review edited by G. H. Lewes, which went bankrupt and was bought
out by Chapman and Hall. In 1866 he projected a history of English prose
fiction, but abandoned it owing to the colossal labour involved. The same year occurred his first connection with Blackwood's
Magazine in which Nina Balatka was
serialized anonymously; and in the year following he published The
Last Chronicle of Barset, in which he
took leave of the famous imaginary county. An excursion into editorship of St.
Paul's Magazine from October
1867 was soon given up, since Trollope felt unfitted for the duties. He had
resigned from the Post Office in September 1867, partly from pique at the
promotion of a subordinate and partly from pressure of work. From March to July
1868 he was again in the U.S.A.
on postal and copyright missions; and in the autumn he stood unsuccessfully for
Parliament in the Liberal interest. The novels Phineas
Finn and He Knew He Was Right (both 1869) saw
him at his commercial apogee; but neither repaid its cost, and he was compelled
thenceforward to accept lower figures.
In May 1871 Trollope gave up
Waltham House, and went on a long visit to a son in Australia. At sea as elsewhere he
wrote indefatigably; on this occasion completing Lady Anna on
the voyage out and Australia and New Zealand on the
return journey, which he made via New Zealand
and the United States.
Back in England just before
Christmas 1872, he settled at 39
Montagu Square, Bloomsbury, London. Here he
worked, as was his habit, to a regular and rigorous schedule, assisted by his
niece, Florence Bland, as secretary. Rising at 5:30, he would write till 11;
then, after breakfast, he would ride or drive. Between tea and dinner a
favourite diversion was whist at the Garrick Club; and at night he would dine
out or entertain some of his many friends at home. This routine was interrupted
(though he never stopped writing) by journeys to Ceylon
and Australia (1875), to South Africa (1877), and to Iceland (1878).
The Autobiography is a model of clear-headed modesty and
frankness was written between October 1875 and April 1876, but not published
until after his death.
Advancing age brought asthma
with it, and even a suspicion of angina pectoris. So, in July 1880 for the
benefit of better air, Trollope moved to Harting
Grange, near Petersfield, Hampshire. Three more
novels were written in 1881, in May 1882, moved by the Phoenix Park murders, he
went to Ireland to collect material for The Landleaguers. In September he left Harting and took quarters -at Garland's
Hotel, Suffolk Street,
Pall Mall, London.
Here, on November 3, while laughing at a family reading of F. Anstey's Vice
Versa, he was struck down by a paralytic stroke; and on December
6, at a house in Welbeck Street, he died. His
wife and two sons survived him.
Url:http://www.victorianweb.org/authors/trollope/bio.html
[From British Authors of
the Nineteenth Century, pp. 629-31]
Other biographies [1] [2] [3] [4] [5]
Academic year 2008/2009
© a.r.e.a./Dr.Vicente Forés
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©Davinia Moreno Arroyo
Universitat de València
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