Anthony Trollope John Millais Popular Books

Anthony Trollope John Millais Biography & Facts

Anthony Trollope ( TROL-əp; 24 April 1815 – 6 December 1882) was an English novelist and civil servant of the Victorian era. Among his best-known works is a series of novels collectively known as the Chronicles of Barsetshire, which revolves around the imaginary county of Barsetshire. He also wrote novels on political, social, and gender issues, and other topical matters. Trollope's literary reputation dipped during the last years of his life, but he regained somewhat of a following by the mid-20th century. Biography Anthony Trollope was the son of barrister Thomas Anthony Trollope and the novelist and travel writer Frances Milton Trollope. Though a clever and well-educated man and a Fellow of New College, Oxford, Thomas Trollope failed at the Bar due to his bad temper. Ventures into farming proved unprofitable, and his expectations of inheritance were dashed when an elderly, childless uncle remarried and fathered children. Thomas Trollope was the son of Rev. (Thomas) Anthony Trollope, rector of Cottered, Hertfordshire, himself the sixth son of Sir Thomas Trollope, 4th Baronet. The baronetcy later came to descendants of Anthony Trollope's second son, Frederic. As a son of landed gentry, Thomas Trollope wanted his sons raised as gentlemen who would attend Oxford or Cambridge. Anthony Trollope suffered much misery in his boyhood, owing to the disparity between the privileged background of his parents and their comparatively meagre means. Born in London, Anthony attended the Harrow School as a day pupil for three years, beginning at age seven, without paying fees because his father's farm, acquired for that purpose, lay in the neighbourhood. After a spell at a private school at Sunbury, he followed his father and two older brothers to Winchester College, where he remained for three years. He then returned to Harrow as a day-boy to reduce his education costs. With no money or friends at these two high-ranked elite public schools, Trollope was bullied a great deal, enduring miserable experiences. At the age of 12, he fantasised about suicide. He also sought refuge in daydreams, constructing elaborate imaginary worlds. In 1827, his mother, Frances Trollope, moved to America, to the Nashoba Commune, along with Trollope's three younger siblings. After that failed, she opened a bazaar in Cincinnati, which proved unsuccessful. Thomas Trollope joined them for a short time before returning to the farm at Harrow, but Anthony stayed in England throughout. His mother returned in 1831 and rapidly made a name for herself as a writer, soon earning a good income. His father's affairs, however, went from bad to worse. He gave up his legal practice entirely and failed to make enough income from farming to pay rent to his landlord, Lord Northwick. In 1834, he fled to Belgium to avoid arrest for debt. The whole family moved to a house near Bruges, where they lived entirely on Frances's earnings. In Belgium, Anthony was offered a commission in an Austrian cavalry regiment. To accept it, he needed to learn French and German; he had a year in which to do so. To acquire these languages without expense to himself and his family, he became an usher (assistant master) in a school in Brussels, making him the tutor of 30 boys. After six weeks there, however, he was offered a clerkship in the General Post Office, obtained through a family friend. Accepting this post, he returned to London in the autumn of 1834. Thomas Trollope died the following year. According to Trollope, "the first seven years of my official life were neither creditable to myself nor useful to the public service." At the Post Office, he acquired a reputation for unpunctuality and insubordination. A debt of £12 to a tailor fell into the hands of a moneylender and grew to more than £200; the lender regularly visited Trollope at his workplace to demand payments. Trollope hated his job, but saw no alternative and lived in constant fear of dismissal. Move to Ireland In 1841, an opportunity to escape arose. A postal surveyor clerk in central Ireland, reported as incompetent, needed replacement. The position was not regarded as desirable, but Trollope, in debt and in trouble at work, volunteered for it; and his supervisor, William Maberly, eager to be rid of him, appointed him to the position. Trollope's new work consisted largely of inspection tours in Connaught, and he based himself in Banagher, King's County. Although he had arrived with a bad reference from London, his new supervisor resolved to judge him on his merits, and within a year, by Trollope's account, he earned a reputation as a valuable public servant. His salary and travel allowance went much further in Ireland than they had in London, and he found himself enjoying a measure of prosperity. He took up fox hunting, which he would pursue enthusiastically for the next three decades. As a post-office surveyor, he interacted with local Irish people, whose company he found pleasant: "The Irish people did not murder me, nor did they even break my head. I soon found them to be good-humoured, clever—the working classes very much more intelligent than those of England—economical and hospitable." At the watering place of Dún Laoghaire, Trollope met Rose Heseltine (1821–1917), the daughter of a Rotherham bank manager. They became engaged when he had been in Ireland for just a year, but Trollope's debts and her lack of a fortune prevented them from marrying until 1844. Soon after they wed, Trollope was transferred to another postal district in the south of Ireland, and the family moved to Clonmel. Their first son, Henry Merivale, was born in 1846, and their second, Frederick James Anthony, in 1847. Early works Though Trollope had decided to become a novelist, he had accomplished very little writing during his first three years in Ireland. At the time of his marriage, he had only written the first of three volumes of his first novel, The Macdermots of Ballycloran. Within a year of his marriage, he finished that work. Trollope began writing on the numerous long train trips around Ireland he had to take to carry out his postal duties. Setting firm goals about how much he would write each day, he eventually became one of the most prolific writers of all time. He wrote his earliest novels while working as a Post Office inspector, occasionally dipping into the "lost-letter" box for ideas. Significantly, many of his earliest novels have Ireland as their setting—natural enough given that he wrote them or thought them up while he was living and working in Ireland, but unlikely to enjoy warm critical reception, given the contemporary English attitude towards Ireland. Critics have pointed out that Trollope's view of Ireland separates him from many of the other Victorian novelists. Other critics claimed that Ireland did not influence Trollope as much as his experience in England, and that the society in Ireland harmed him as a writer, especially since Ireland was experiencing the.... Discover the Anthony Trollope John Millais popular books. Find the top 100 most popular Anthony Trollope John Millais books.