Literature / Writers Datebook: April 24
Brief biography of Anthony Trollope, English novelist, a popular 19th century English novelist, best known as creator of stories set in the imaginary English county of Barsetshire and the aristocratic and political Palliser family. He delineated provincial English middle-class society in a series of novels set in fictitious cathedral city of Barchester.
Early Life
Trollope was born in London on April 24, 1815, and educated at Harrow and Winchester, two famous public schools. His mother, Frances Trollope, a prolific writer, earned money by writing novels and travel books. His father was an unsuccessful lawyer and Fellow of New College, Oxford.
Early Career
At 19 Trollope became a post office clerk in London's General Post Office, and at 26 he was transferred in Ireland and made a deputy postal surveyor. He worked for the post office for 33 years. Notably, he first introduced the red British mail boxes known as pillar boxes. He left the civil service in 1867. He lived mainly in England and Ireland, but his work also took him to Africa and America.
Soon after marrying in 1844, Trollope began writing in his spare time to earn extra money. He regularly produced 1000 words an hour before breakfast. He was 32 when the Macdermots of Ballycloran, his first book, was published. His The Kellys and the O'Kellys were unsuccessful.
Later years as novelist
He was 40 when his first successful story The Warden, his first series of Barchester novels appeared. It is about a clergyman accused of misusing money meant for the old people's home he looks after. This series is about about people living in the imaginary cathedral city of Barchester. It includes the novels Barchester Towers (1857), Doctor Thorne (1858), and The Last Chronicle of Barset (1867).
The format of the Barchester series appealed to his readers and Trollope embarked on a more ambitious sequence, known as the Palliser novels. Many of these later works are about power and politics involving his invented family of wealthy aristocrats and politicians called the Pallisers, with Plantagenet Palliser, as one of his lead characters. Among the novels in this second series are Can You Forgive Her? (1864) followed by Phineas Finn (1869); others in the sequence are The Eustace Diamonds (1873) and The Prime Minister (1876).
He wrote nearly 50 novels altogether. Trollope introduced into English fiction some of the most memorable characters like Mr. Harding, Archdeacon Grantly and Bishop Proudie. With humour and gentle satire, Trollope told stories of ordinary men and women with human weaknesses.
Trollope also wrote travel books, biographies of Thackeray and Cicero, among others; plays, short stories and literary sketches.
Anthony Trollope died on December 6, 1882, in Marylebone, London.
Photo Credit:
Anthony Trollope. Wikipedia Commons / Public Domain
Resources:
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