Customer Reviews

Anthony Trollope

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For the longest time, I had no idea why people read biographies. My experience of the genre taught me that the best way to learn to dislike a writer or a historic figure was to read their biography. There are too many lives of celebrities that are written in a plodding, confusing way and that offer nothing more than a disjointed collection of gossip and boring lists of people the person whose biography one is reading met in the course of their life.

And then I read Victoria Glendinning's biography of Anthony Trollope and realized what the genre was supposed to be about. Glendinning had a difficult task ahead of her. Trollope is not the most fascinating Victorian writer, and his life is, to be completely honest, quite boring. He worked for the Post Office, lived in Ireland, married, lived happily with his wife, wrote books, they became popular, wrote more books, they became even more popular, and so on. Only misery makes for good basis for a book. A successful, mostly contented existence such as Trollope's looks uneventful and pedestrian to his XXIst century fans.

Glendinning, however, manages to make this 500-page-long biography read like a mystery novel. Victorian era comes alive on the pages of this fascinating book. We meet Trollope's extraordinary mother, his not very endearing brother, his unsuccessful sons, and many of his friends from the literary circles of Victorian England. Trollope's extensive travels allow us to visit Italy, the United States, Australia and the West Indies and catch a glimpse of what they were like and how the were seen by a conservative English writer of that time. Glendinning gives us just enough details of Trollope's novels to make us want to read them but not as many as will spoil our future reading pleasure. In the Preface Glendinning states that if the readers of her biography of Trollope decide to reread one or several of the writer's books after finishing the biography, she will consider her goal in writing it fulfilled. I am pleased to say that the author achieved her goal. Right after finishing Glendinning's book, I ordered a Kindle copy of The Way We Live Now, the novel that Glendinning (and many other fans of Trollope) consider to be the author's masterpiece.

After looking at reviews of Trollope biographies, I chose this one and am glad I did. It is informative as well as extremely readable. Also has photographs which help illustrate the book. It helped me to understand Trollope better. While I was not always sure I would have liked him as a person, I admire his dedication to his craft. Some dislike Trollope because he wrote for money (he even published in his autobiography how much he made from different novels), he is not different there than many best-selling novelists today. But he is a master at character. Some criticize deficiencies in his attention to plot, but I find his novels hang together rather nicely. I finished The Barsetshire novels after reading this biography and enjoyed them immensely - even more than I would have because of having read Glendinning's book. Would buy again.

This is a remarkably good book, the product of one of the current group of wonderful English biographers. I read previously VITA: THE LIFE OF VITA SACKVILLE-WEST by Victoria Glendinning and enjoyed it immensely.

Anthony Trollope was his mother's Benjamin. The family moved to Harrow to permit the sons of the family to be educated there through the foundation, a charitable trust. Byron was a notorious old boy. Anthony was not spared from bullying.

The family was troubled by Mr. Trollope's mental and physical problems and chronic money problems. Anthony wore ill-fitting clothes. Interestingly, the vicar of Harrow was a member of the Clapham Sect. Anthony went to Winchester before his twelfth birthday. Later he was withdrawn, his fees not having been paid, (he was a pariah), re-entering Harrow where he stayed until he was twenty.

With a failure of income both from the practice of law, Mr. Trollope was a barrister, and the family's farm, Mrs. Trollope went to America. In the end, everyone in the family, but Anthony, joined her. Anthony was compelled to spend his holidays alone in his father's chambers at Lincoln's Inn reading Shakespeare. At age fifteen he began keeping a journal.

DOMESTIC MANNERS OF THE AMERICANS by Mrs. Trollope was issued in 1832 and it was a success. Mrs. Trollope's nonstop literary career began in 1831 when she returned from America and lasted for twenty-five years. Industrious and jovial, she was lionized. Anthony's father was nearly imprisoned for debt and escaped to Belgium. Anthony started at the Post Office as a junior clerk. His mother had pulled strings. Anthony's older brother, Tom, lived with Mrs. Trollope following the deaths of a son, a daughter, and her husband. Another daughter married.

At his behest, Anthony was transferred by the Post Office to Ireland. In that environment he learned his bluff and hearty manner from Irish acquaintances who were able to draw a response from the shy young man. The move was, therefore, beneficial. It took place in 1841. Anthony developed skill in keeping accounts. He married Rose Heseltine, the daughter of a bank manager in 1844. His marriage gave Anthony confidence.

Surveying the West of England for the Post office, Anthony became an expert on Devonshire. He began THE WARDEN, his fourth novel, in 1853, and this was set in Barsetshire, paralleling the West Country Anthony now knew so well. The year THE WARDEN came out, 1855, was the year he began writing BARCHESTER TOWERS. His great success commenced with the third Barset novel, DOCTOR THORNE. For Anthony Trollope writing was an addiction.

In 1859 Trollope was given the post of surveyor of the Eastern District of England. He took a lease on Waltham House at Waltham Cross, Essex. Subsequently the Trollopes lived in London and in Sussex. At the time of the move Anthony didn't help much since he was writing FRAMLEY PARSONAGE to be serialized in the CORNHILL magazine.

Trollope met Thakeray through the publisher Joseph Smith. (Smith was Charlotte Bronte's and Ruskin's publisher.) Trollope's friends included John Everett Millais and G. H. Lewes. He wrote nineteen novels between 1860 and 1871. In 1867 he resigned from the Post Office.

Anthony was so productive that publishers were suspicious and he had difficulty placing some of his work. Anthony's other interests were the classics and politics. He faced Dickens-like challenges in his youth to grow to become a convivial and affluent author. His buoyancy and genius account for his substantial achievements. He died in 1882, at age sixty-seven, shortly after having a stroke.