Anthony Trollope – Author Biography
Anthony Trollope was the most industrious novelist of the Victorian age, the author of 47 novels including the beloved Chronicles of Barsetshire and the Palliser series. His shrewd, humane portraits of English institutional life — the church, Parliament, the law — made him one of the 19th century’s great chroniclers of society.
Early Life
Anthony Trollope was born on April 24, 1815, in London. His was an unhappy childhood: his father, a failed barrister turned farmer, was harsh and unsuccessful, and the family was often in debt. Trollope was a lonely, awkward schoolboy. At nineteen he found the making of his life: a clerkship in the General Post Office, where he would work for 33 years — eventually rising to a senior position and, famously, introducing the pillar box to Britain.
Career
Trollope wrote his first novels while working full-time at the Post Office, rising at 5:30 each morning to produce 2,500 words before breakfast — a discipline he maintained for decades. His breakthrough was The Warden (1855) and Barchester Towers (1857), the first of the six Barsetshire novels set in a fictional cathedral county. The six Palliser novels, beginning with Can You Forgive Her? (1864), dissected parliamentary politics. His masterpiece of social satire, The Way We Live Now (1875), eviscerated Victorian financial corruption. In total he published 47 novels, plus short stories, travel books, and plays. His posthumous Autobiography (1883), with its frank account of writing for money on a schedule, shocked readers and temporarily damaged his reputation. He died on December 6, 1882.
Major Works
Trollope’s essential works are the Barsetshire novels (The Warden, Barchester Towers, Doctor Thorne, Framley Parsonage, The Small House at Allington, The Last Chronicle of Barset), the Palliser novels, and the standalone satire The Way We Live Now.
Writing Style and Themes
Trollope’s style is conversational and unhurried — he chats with the reader, admits his characters are inventions, and takes his time. His great subject is how institutions actually work: the compromises, vanities, and quiet heroisms of clergymen, politicians, and civil servants. He is the novelist of the second-rate but decent man, the ambitious woman constrained by convention, the moral gray areas of respectable life. His psychological insight is subtle rather than showy, and his comedy of manners is unmatched in its gentle irony. Where Dickens sensationalizes and Eliot moralizes, Trollope simply understands.
Legacy
After a period of eclipse, Trollope was triumphantly revived in the 20th century and is now ranked with Dickens and Eliot among the Victorian giants. His Barsetshire remains one of fiction’s great invented counties, and The Way We Live Now feels newly relevant in every age of financial scandal. His working method — the daily word count, the professional discipline — became the model for generations of working writers.
