Exploring Anthony Trollope discussion

Does knowing something about the author add to your reading experience?

There are places to get an overview of Trollope's life (wikipedia to start), or you might have been more thorough and read a biography. Let's use this thread to talk about his life and how it affected his writing.

Some biographies:

Anthony Trollope

The Chronicler of Barsetshire: A Life of Anthony Trollope

Trollope, His Life and Art

Trollope: A Biography

I finished C.P. Snow's biography yesterday. Good, though perhaps not as good as I expected. It is heavily illustrated - Trollope at various times, of course, but also many paintings of the sort of things Trollope wrote about.

There are a few spoilers, but very few. I noticed one only that would be a true spoiler and that given such brief mention that it would be easy to almost not notice. I thought it interesting that, though The Three Clerks is usually thought to be Trollope's most autobiographical novel, Snow thinks that Johnny Eames as a character is most Trollope-like. Eames appears in two of the Barchester series. Snow also believes Mr. Crawley of the same series is most like Trollope's father.

Snow does not rank those top 1/2 dozen novels he thinks best, but with their frequent mention I'm guessing that Barchester Towers and The Duke's Children would make his list. He also said that Nina Balatka and Linda Tressel are just awful, and that the humor in The Struggles of Brown, Jones and Robinson, by One of the Firm falls flat.

While Snow mentioned some of Trollope's travel books, he did not mention any of Trollopes shorter fiction.

Snow also likes the word "percipience" to describe Trollope. It's not a word I've come across many times, and though it was pretty clear from the context and my having read some of the novels, I looked it up anyway.

from Merriam Webster

Examples of PERCIPIENCE

a novelist who reveals an exceptional percipience of human aspirations and desires

I think it is this very characteristic that has me loving Trollope so much.

The Trollope article mentioned in the Birthday Celebration topic mentions a couple of books about Trollope. Perhaps more scholarly than I thought when I started this group, but might appeal.

Reforming Trollope: Race, Gender, and Englishness in the Novels of Anthony Trollope by Deborah Denenholz Morse

and

The Politics of Gender in Anthony Trollope's Novels: New Readings for the Twenty-First Century by Margaret Markwick

Both of these authors have other Trollopian to offer.

This morning I ordered a couple of books on Trollope, though I can't promise when I'll get to them.

Trollope and Women

Oxford Reader's Companion to Trollope

There is also a biography I'd like to get to sooner rather than later:

Anthony Trollope, which is available in the Kindle format.

Elizabeth (Alaska) wrote: "This morning I ordered a couple of books on Trollope, though I can't promise when I'll get to them.

Trollope and Women

Oxford Reader's Companion to Trollope

There is..."

I'd like to read all three of these too, Elizabeth. Thanks for ferreting them out!

My Oxford Reader's Companion to Trollope arrived today and I have only briefly leafed through it.


This is not for a straight-through reading, but a terrific reference tool as I make my way through Trollope. It is organized like a dictionary or one-volume encyclopedia with entries for Trollope's characters and titles. It includes references for us non-Brits, such as House of Commons, and there are a number of entries pertaining to London, among them "clubs", "season" or "streets and squares." There are also generic headings that apply to Trollope and his time, such as "Civil Service", "marriage and divorce" and "transportation and travel."

I suspect this will find a permanent position bedside and will also be picked up when only a few minutes are available rather than a true reading session.

Elizabeth (Alaska) wrote: "My Oxford Reader's Companion to Trollope arrived today and I have only briefly leafed through it.


This is not for a straight-through reading, but a terrific reference tool as I mak..."

I have Cambridge and Oxford Reading Companions for Thomas Hardy, Charles Dickens, and I think for George Eliot too. I love them and actually get into them a time or two when reading the novels of those authors. Excellent references!

I started reading Markwick's Trollope and Women in which she includes a list of Works About Trollope and one called Background. I have started a new, closed topic, which includes her About Trollope titles (and some others I found along the way).

I haven't finished the Markwick yet, but will in a day or two and post a review. I will say at this time that reading this makes me want to study Trollope perhaps more deeply than I had anticipated when I embarked on my journey of reading all of his novels.

Trollope and Women, here is my review.

https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...

After reading this, I'm beginning to recognize that Trollope has done for middle-class women of England of the mid-19th Century, what Balzac was doing with French society of the early-19th Century. We are shown the multiple ways in which women, particularly, contended with the circumstances in which they found themselves. Trollope isn't just women to be sure, but he deals with this subject better and more completely than other authors I've read of the period.

A friend shared this today:
http://lithub.com/lithub-daily-octobe...

Anniversary of Trollope tendering his resignation from the post office so he could write full time!

Great stuff! I'm glad he did