Graham Handley - Anthony Trollope

First published in 1999

The History Press
The Mill, Brimscombe Port
Stroud, Gloucestershire, GL 5 2 QG
www.thehistorypress.co.uk

This ebook edition first published in 2011

All rights reserved
Graham Handley, 1999, 2011

The right of Graham Handley, to be identified as the Author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyrights, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

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EPUB ISBN 978 0 7524 7075 7
MOBI ISBN 978 0 7524 7076 4

Original typesetting by The History Press

Between pp. 44 and 45

1 Study of Anthony Trollope at about the time he resigned from the Post Office, 1867

2 Frances Trollope, painted by Auguste Hervieu, 1832

3 Mrs Trollopes house at Hadley, near Barnet

4 Family group at Tom Trollopes home in Florence, about 1860

5 General Post Office, St Martins le Grand, 1852

6 Improvements in the postal service, 1863

7 Composite photograph of 1876, showing Anthony with some of his distinguished contemporaries

8 Drawing of Anthony by the celebrated cartoonist Spy, Vanity Fair, 1873

9 Cover for The Last Chronicle of Barset

10 The cover for Part XI of The Way We Live Now

11 The frontispiece for Anthonys novel, Orley Farm, by Millais

Anyone writing on Anthony Trollope today has full resources on which to draw. In the last decade or so, four distinguished and detailed biographies (by Robert Super, Richard Mullen, N. John Hall and Victoria Glendinning) have been published, each in their vivid particularities enhancing our appreciation and understanding of a major Victorian writer. I acknowledge here the benefits I derived from these in the period 19891993, and have referred back to notes made on them at the time of reading. I must similarly record my debt to N. John Halls exemplary edition of The Letters of Anthony Trollope (1983). Peter Rooke helped me with the choice of illustrations. I am grateful to my editors, Jaqueline Mitchell and Helen Gray. My greatest personal debt is to John Letts OBE, chairman of the Trollope Society, who read my manuscript and made a number of stimulating suggestions, most of which have been incorporated. The Trollope Society is flourishing here and in America, its aim of having all Trollopes fiction in print as cased editions virtually accomplished. Scholarship and criticism matches Trollopes own writing span, while Richard Mullens The Penguin Companion to Trollope (1996) and the Oxford Readers Companion to Trollope (1999), to which a number of contemporary Trollopians have contributed, reflect the density of interest in his work. Television productions of The Pallisers and The Barchester Chronicles in the 1970s and 1980s kept this much-loved writer in the public eye, and I recently discovered a video of one of Trollopes best stories, Malachis Cove (1987). Cassettes and readings on radio of the major novels occur regularly. I hope that the short biography which follows will contribute towards the picture of the man and his writings for readers approaching Trollope for the first time or renewing acquaintance with him. There is a very rich verbal territory to explore, and I use the metaphor deliberately to echo Trollopes lifelong propensity for physical and mental journeyings.

(Publication dates given below are those of the first book issue of each of Trollopes works. Serial/part publications are not listed).