BIOGRAPHY
Anthony Trollope (1815-1882) post office official and
prolific English novelist from the Victorian Era,
penned The Barset Chronicles series.
Anthony Trollope was born on 24
April, 1815 at 6 Keppel Street, Bloomsbury, London, the fourth son of Thomas
Anthony Trollope (1774-1835) and Frances (née Milton) (1779-1863). His father,
who suffered from bouts of depression, was an unsuccessful lawyer and farmer.
The family's humiliating state of poverty formed a lasting impression on
Trollope, who was a tall, lanky, poorly dressed unhappy lad amongst the
aristocratic youth of the famous schools he attended. In 1827, while Trollope
attended his father's old school,
Trollope started work as a clerk with
the post office when he was nineteen years old and in 1841 went on to become
the postal surveyor for
In 1844 Trollope married Rose
Heseltine and they had two sons, Henry (b.1846) and Frederick (b.1847).
Trollope's study into Irish discontent, The MacDermots
of Ballycloran (1847) was his first book,
however, while in England he wrote The Warden (1855) the first of his
famous Barchester Chronicles series, based on English
upper middle-class Victorian life, which was his first acknowledged success. Barchester Towers (1857), Doctor Thorne
(1858), Framley Parsonage (1861), The
Small House at Allington (1864), and The Last
Chronicle of Barset (1867) completed the series,
readers especially enjoying his intense study of everyday social life,
ecclesiastical politics and character developments in the imaginary cathedral
city (modelled on Winchester) and the surrounding county of Barchester
(modelled on Somerset). Trollope had finally come into his métier.
He was successful and prosperous, much sought after by
publishers and became friends with many literary figures including W. E.
Forster and George Eliot. He was involved in some business dealings concerning
various magazines and gazettes and even tried his hand at editorship for
Trollope's Palliser series: Can
You Forgive Her? (1864), Phineas Finn
(1869), The Eustace Diamonds (1873), Phineas
Redux (1876), The Prime Minister (1876)
and The Duke's Children (1880) were well-received, and he also produced
insightful novels on political and social issues of the day during this time.
In 1867 Trollope resigned from the post office and unsuccessfully ran an
election campaign as a Liberal parliamentary candidate. In 1871 to 1872 he gave
up his
Trollope moved again in 1880 for
want of better air, with hints of asthma and angina pectoris. He produced a few
more novels the next year, one of them being The Plumber (1881). In May
of 1882 he was staying at
Url: http: //www.online-literature.com/anthony-trollope/
Biography written by C.D.
Merriman for Jalic Inc. Copyright Jalic
Inc 2005. All Rights Reserved.
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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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