Anthony Trollope: Encyclopedia II - Anthony Trollope - Biography

Anthony Trollope - Biography

Anthony Trollope was born in London, the son of a barrister, Thomas Anthony Trollope, and his wife Frances, who would later become a successful writer. Thomas Trollope was a clever and well-educated man, a Fellow of New College, Oxford, but his bad temper led to failure at the bar, his ventures into farming were unprofitable, and he lost the inheritance on which he was counting when an elderly uncle married and started a family. Nonetheless he was from a genteel background, with connections to the landed gentry, and wished his sons to be educated as gentlemen and to attend Oxford or Cambridge. The conflict between his family's social background and its poverty was to cause misery to Anthony Trollope as a boy.

Anthony attended Harrow School as a day boy for three years from the age of seven, as his father's farm was in that neighbourhood. After a spell at a private school, he followed his father and two older brothers in attending Winchester College, where he stayed for three years. Finally he again returned to Harrow as a day boy to reduce the cost of his education. Trollope's experiences at these schools were very miserable. These are two of the most elite schools in England, but Trollope had no money and no friends, and was beaten a great deal. At the age of twelve he fantasised about suicide. However, he took to daydreaming instead, constructing elaborate inner worlds.

In 1827 Frances Trollope moved to America with Trollope's three younger siblings, where she opened a bazaar in Cincinnati, which was unsuccessful. Thomas Trollope joined them for a short time before returning to the farm at Harrow, but Anthony stayed in England throughout. His mother returned in 1831, and rapidly made a name for herself as a writer, soon earning a good income. His father's affairs, however, went from bad to worse. He gave up his practice at the bar entirely, and in 1834 he fled to Belgium to avoid being arrested for debt. The whole family moved to a house near Bruges, where they were entirely dependent on Frances's earnings. In 1835, Thomas Trollope died.

While he was in Belgium, Anthony worked as a Classics usher (that is, a junior or assistant teacher) in a school with a view to learning French and German, so that he could take up a promised commission in an Austrian cavalry regiment, but this only lasted six weeks. He then obtained a position as a civil servant in the Post Office through one of his mother's family connections, and returned to London on his own. This was a gentlemanly occupation, but not well paid. Trollope lived in boarding houses, and remained socially awkward; this was what he called his "hobbledehoyhood". He made little progress in his career until he was sent to work in Ireland in 1841. He married an Englishwoman named Rose Heseltine in 1844. They spent the early years of their marriage in Ireland, but later moved back to England.

On the numerous long train trips Trollope had to take to carry out his Post Office duties, he began writing, and set himself very firm goals about how much he would write per day, earning himself a reputation as one of the most prolific writers of his time. He wrote his earliest novels while working as a Post Office inspector, occasionally dipping into the "lost-letter" box for ideas (it is significant that many of his earliest novels have Ireland as their setting — natural enough given his background, but not likely to lead to a warm critical reception given the contemporary English attitudes towards Ireland). During the period of his employment as a Post Office official, Trollope is credited with having introduced the pillar box (a bright red mail box) in the United Kingdom.

By the mid-1860s Trollope had reached a fairly senior position at the Post Office, and was also earning a substantial income from his novels. He had overcome the awkwardness of his youth, and was well liked in literary circles; he was also an enthusiastic huntsman. He left the Post Office in 1867, and after failing in a bid for election to Parliament as a Liberal candidate in 1868, he concentrated entirely on his literary career. As well as continuing to produce novels rapidly, he worked as editor of the St Paul's Magazine, which published several of his novels in serial form. His first major success came with The Warden (1855) — the first in the series of six novels set in the fictional county of "Barsetshire" (often referred to as the Chronicles of Barsetshire). The best-known of these is probably the comic masterpiece, Barchester Towers (1857).

Trollope's other major sequence of novels, the Palliser series, deals with politics, mainly in the shape of Plantagenet Palliser (although, like the Barsetshire series, many other characters feature in each novel). Also noteworthy are Cousin Henry and Dr Wortle's School, both probing psychological and moral studies in the vein of The Warden, and a sweeping satire, The Way We Live Now.

Trollope's popularity and contemporary critical success diminished in his later years, but he continued to write prolifically, and some of his later novels are now highly regarded. By the time of his death Trollope had completed approximately four dozen novels, as well as dozens of short stories and a few books on travel.

Anthony Trollope died in London in 1882, and was buried in Kensal Green Cemetery, where his contemporary Wilkie Collins is also buried.

C. P. Snow wrote a biography of Trollope, published in 1975, called Trollope: His Life and Art.

Adapted from the Wikipedia article "Biography", under the G.N U Free Docmentation License. Please also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki