Anthony Trollope

Anthony Trollope was born in London in 1815, son of a barrister who was unsuccessful at the Bar. His mother, Frances Trollope, a brave, talented woman, won fame as the author of travel books and novels.

Sent to Harrow as a town boy and day scholar, Anthony was despised by snobs among the masters and more fortunate pupils, and had a wretched school life. On gaining a petty clerkship in the post office he was equally unhappy, until at the end of seven years he accepted a travelling inspectorship in Ireland which no one else wanted.

For thirty years he zealously served the post office, at the same time writing as much as any full-time author, and gaining fame as one of the most welcomed writers of the age. He was not at once successful; his first Irish novels and a play failed, but with the Barchester novels he was a made man.

His work brought him in contact with all sorts and conditions of men, with gaiety and grief, with the rowdy humour of the hunting field, the narrow life of the cathedral city, the pathos and pleasures of the rural scene, the heroism and pettiness of middle and upper class life.

 

With a gift for narrative and power to stir the heart to merriment. and honest sympathy to tears, he had the lightning mind of a camera for seizing impressions from life of the quaint, the unusual, and the beautiful in character, phrase, or circumstance. He was not a creator, but he portrayed.

We feel that there really was a Bishop; Proudie who at last prayed that "God might save him from being glad that his wife was dead." Novels flowed regularly from his, unwearying pen, and ambitious works on his travels, biographies,, articles for the reviews and daily press, varied by an editorship and an engaging autobiography.

A stalwart, hearty, rather truculent man, he scoffed at all pretence to mystery and inspiration in writing. He wrote according to a system, which was to rise at half-past five every morning and write 250 words every quarter of an hour until 2500 words had been written and the gong called to breakfast.

This unromantic system enabled him to launch masterpieces destined to ride gay and resilient, fresh and vivid, portraits of his age, for many a generation yet to come, and he made £70,000 by his pen.

 

 

 

 

 

 

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