Trollope, Anthony. (1815 - 1882).
W o r k
- author of nearly 50 novels, of travel-books, biographies, and critical works
- the most informed and observant political novelist in English
- concerned with the politics of parliamentary and ecclesiastical manoeuvres and scandals, country-house shuffles and reshuffles, and personalities in conflict and in mutual complement
T h e ‘ B a r c h e s t e r ’ S e r i e s :
- a sequence of novels set in a fictional English cathedral town and its surrounding countryside
The Warden (1855):
- a local scandal broadens into a national issue, and an upright man becomes a victim of circumstances beyond his control
Barchester Towers (1857):
- one of his most successful comic observations of the political process at work: a series of petty ploys and manoeuvres, and a clash of personalities
- the complacent security of the town is threatened by the advent of a new Bishop and his Evangelical wife
Doctor Thorne (1858), Framley Parsonage (1861), and The Small House at Allington (1864):
- concerned less with clerical politics x more with secular match-making
The Last Chronicle of Barset (1867):
- a conscious conclusion to the series
- suggests the effects of ageing, death, and an ill-founded suspicion on an established community
T h e ‘ P a l l i s e r ’ S e r i e s :
- a sequence of novels concerned with the family connections of a Duke
- of a more metropolitan consciousness and cosmopolitan culture
Can Your Forgive Her? (1864) and The Eustace Diamonds (1873):
- parliamentary concerns are relieved by ‘love and intrigue’
Phineas Finn (1869) and Phineas Redux (1874):
- an Irish Member of Parliament, outsider to the British Establishment, becomes an object of female flirtation and a victim of male jealousy
The Prime Minister (1876):
- the protagonist, a thin-skinned but upright man, has no greater ambition than to introduce a decimal currency
The Duke's Children (1879)
A l s o W r o t e :
The Way We Live Now (1875):
- his most disconcerting work of social criticism, fits in no ‘series’
- sees a nation caught up in deceit, decadence, and financial speculation
Basics
(Photo: Wikimedia Commons).
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Author
Anthony Trollope. (1815 - 1882). British. -
Work
Novelist. Critic. Author of The Way We Live Now (1875). -
Genres
Victorian fiction. Political novel. Socially critical novel.
Literature
Abrams, Meyer Howard, ed. The Norton Anthology of English Literature. New York: W. W. Norton, 1993.
Barnard, Robert. Stručné dějiny anglické literatury. Praha: Brána, 1997.
Baugh, Albert C. ed. A Literary History of England. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1967.
Coote, Stephen. The Penguin Short History of English Literature. London: Penguin, 1993.
Sampson, George. The Concise Cambridge History of English Literature. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1946.
Sanders, Andrew. The Short Oxford History of English Literature. New York: Clarendon Press, 1994.
Quote
"In the latter days of July in the year 185-, a most important question was for ten days hourly asked in the cathedral city of Barchester, and answered every hour in various ways—Who was to be the new Bishop?"
The opening of Barchester Towers (1857).