TROLLOPE, trol'lfip, ANTHONY (I815-82). An English novelist, born in London, April 24, 1S15. son of Frances Trollope (q.v.). Educated at Winchester and at Barrow, he proved a dull scholar, and his poverty made his school days most unhappy. About 1835 he obtained an official position in the General Post-Office in London. While connected with that depart ment he found time to amuse the public with a long series of novels of remarkable merit. The first work which attracted serious attention to him, The Warden (1855), was followed by a con tinuation entitled Barchester Towers (1857), which remains, perhaps, the most widely read of all his books. In rapid succession to these came Dr. Thorne (1858), The Three Clerks (1858), The Bertrams (1859), Castle Richmond (1860), Framley Parsonage (1861), Orley ( 1862), The Small House at Allington (1864), Can You Forgive Herr (1864-65), Phincas Finn (1869), The Eastace Diamonds (1873), Phincas Redux (1874), The Way We Live Now (1875), Is He Popen joy? (1878), and other novels. Trollope also published several pleasant volumes of travel, among them being North. America (1862), Aus tralia and New Zealand (1874) , and South Africa (1878). In biography, he wrote a Life of Caesar (1870), and one of Cicero (1880), besides sketches of Thaekeray (1879) and Palmerston (1882). He died at Harting, Sussex, December 6, 1882.
Trollope is one of the most admirable of the English realists. He delineates the English society of his time with wonderful penetration, and with an equal command of humor and of pathos. Hawthorne wrote of his novels: "They precisely suit my taste—solid and substantial . . . and just as real as if some giant had hewn a great lump out of the earth and put it under a glass case with all the inhabitants going about their daily business and not suspecting that they were being made a show- of." He particu
larly excels in depicting life in the cathedral 'towns: and his portraits of bishops, archdeacons, and the minor clergy are remarkable for their truth and humor. His Mrs. Proudie, who ap pears in Barchester Towers and again in The Last Chronicle of Barset (1867), is the finest shrew since Shakespeare's Katherine. Very at tractive, too, are his young girls, as Lily Dale, Mary Thorne, and Grace Crawley. Trollope did not himself lay any especial claim to psycho logical insight; yet it would be hard to lied in English fiction anything more true and delicate than his analysis of the conscience of Septimus Harding, in The 1Varden; or anything more poignant than his study of jealousy in Ile Knew Ile Was Right. Ilis Lizzie Eustace, in The Eustace Diamonds, is a type of insincerity and selfishness worthy to be set beside Thackeray's Becky Sharp. His snobs, his rustics, and his husband-hunting young women are all drawn with surprising vividness. On the whole, Trollope's best work is contained in The Chronicles of Bar setshire (13 vols., New York, 1892) ; yet many of his less read novels, such as The Way 11'c Live Now, The Senator, and The Claverings, are very little inferior. Curious facts concern ing his life and methods of composition may be found in his Autobiography (New York, 1883). For critical estimates of Trollope, the reader is referred to a paper by Henry James in Partial Portraits (London and New York, 1883) ; and to IL T. Peck's Introduction to vol. i, of the `Royal' edition of Trollope's best known novels (Philadelphia, 1900). Consult also Cross, De velopment of the English Novel (New York, 1899).