Editing Anthony Trollope (section)

==Works and reputation==
{{main|Anthony Trollope bibliography}}
Trollope's first major success came with ''[[The Warden]]'' (1855)—the first of six novels set in the fictional county of "Barsetshire" (often collectively referred to as the ''[[Chronicles of Barsetshire]]''), dealing primarily with the clergy and landed gentry. ''[[Barchester Towers]]'' (1857) has probably become the best-known of these. Trollope's other major series, the [[Palliser novels]], which overlap with the Barsetshire novels, concerned itself with politics, with the wealthy, industrious [[Plantagenet Palliser]] (later Duke of Omnium) and his delightfully spontaneous, even richer wife Lady Glencora featured prominently. However, as with the Barsetshire series, many other well-developed characters populated each novel and in one, ''[[The Eustace Diamonds]]'', the Pallisers play only a small role.

[[File:Victorian post box Guernsey.jpg|thumb|upright|A [[Victorian era|VR]] [[pillar box]] originally installed in [[Guernsey]] in 1852/3 on Trollope's recommendation and one of the oldest still in use.]]

Trollope's popularity and critical success diminished in his later years, but he continued to write prolifically, and some of his later novels have acquired a good reputation. In particular, critics, who concur that the book was not popular when published, generally acknowledge the sweeping satire ''[[The Way We Live Now]]'' (1875) as his masterpiece.<ref>{{cite web|first=Amanda |last=Craig|author-link=Amanda Craig|url=https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/books/reviews/book-of-a-lifetime-the-way-we-live-now-by-anthony-trollope-1676694.html#|title=Book of a Lifetime, The Way We Live Now by Anthony Trollope|website=independent.co.uk|date=30 April 2009}}</ref> In all, Trollope wrote 47 novels, 42 short stories, and five travel books, as well as nonfiction books titled ''[[William Makepeace Thackeray|Thackeray]]'' (1879) and ''[[Henry John Temple, 3rd Viscount Palmerston|Lord Palmerston]]'' (1882).

After his death, Trollope's ''An Autobiography'' appeared and was a bestseller in London.<ref>{{cite journal|title=Literary Gossip|journal=The Week: A Canadian Journal of Politics, Literature, Science and Arts|date=6 December 1883|volume=1|series=1|page=13|url=https://archive.org/stream/weekcanadianjour01toro#page/n7/mode/1up}}</ref> Trollope's downfall in the eyes of the critics stemmed largely from this volume.<ref>Saintsbury, George (1895). [https://archive.org/stream/correctedimpress00sain#page/156/mode/2up "Three Mid-Century Novelists."] In ''Corrected Impressions'', London: William Heinemann, 172–173.</ref><ref>Shumaker, Wayne (1954). [https://archive.org/stream/englishautobiogr011098mbp#page/n173/mode/2up "The Mixed Mode: Trollope's Autobiography."] In ''English Autobiography'', Berkeley: University of California Press.</ref> Even during his writing career, reviewers tended increasingly to shake their heads over his prodigious output, but when Trollope revealed that he strictly adhered to a daily writing quota, and admitted that he wrote for money, he confirmed his critics' worst fears.<ref>"He told me that he began to write at five o'clock every morning, and wrote a certain number of hours till it was time to dress, never touching his literary work after breakfast. I remember telling him that I always worked at night, and his saying, 'Well, I give the freshest hours of the day to my work; you give the fag end of the day to yours.' I have often thought over this, but my experience has always been that the early morning is the best time for study and taking in ideas, night the best time for giving out thoughts. I said that I envied him the gift of imagination, which enabled him to create characters. He said, 'Imagination! my dear fellow, not a bit of it; it is cobbler's wax.' Seeing that I was rather puzzled, he said that the secret of success was to put a lump of cobbler's wax on your chair, sit on it and stick to it till you had succeeded. He told me he had written for years before he got paid." — Brackenbury, Sir Henry (1909). [https://archive.org/stream/cu31924028000457#page/n9/mode/2up ''Some Memories of My Spare Time''], William Blackwood & Sons, pp. 51–52.</ref> Writers were expected to wait for inspiration, not to follow a schedule.<ref>"It happened that Anthony Trollope was a writer. But that circumstance was unimportant. He was pre-eminently a man. Trollope devoted himself to the business of authorship exactly as he might have devoted himself to any other business. He worked at writing for three hours each day, not a very hard daily stint. But, as it happened, he had another occupation, a position in the English postal service. He made up his mind to do his stint of writing no matter what happened. Often he would write on trains. What writers call 'waiting for an inspiration' he considered nonsense. The result of his system was that he accomplished a vast amount of work. But, by telling the truth about his system, he injured his reputation. When his 'Autobiography' was published after his death, lovers of literature were shocked, instead of being impressed by his courage and industry. They had the old-fashioned notion about writing, which still persists, by the way. They liked to think of writers as 'inspired,' as doing their work by means of a divine agency. As if we did not all do our work by a divine agency no matter what the work may be. But the divine agency insists on being backed up with character, which means courage and persistence, the qualities that make for system. In the 'Autobiography,' Anthony Trollope unquestionably showed that he was not an inspirational writer, and that he was a man inspired by tremendous moral force." – Barry, John D. (1918). [https://archive.org/stream/reactionsessays00barrrich#page/n59/mode/2up "Using Time."] In ''Reactions and Other Essays'', J.J. Newbegin, pp. 39–40.</ref>

[[Julian Hawthorne]], an American writer, critic and friend of Trollope, while praising him as a man, calling him "a credit to England and to human nature, and ... [deserving] to be numbered among the darlings of mankind", also said that "he has done great harm to English fictitious literature by his novels".<ref>Hawthorne, Julian (1887). [https://archive.org/stream/confessionscriti00hawt#page/140/mode/2up "The Maker of Many Books."] In ''Confessions and Criticisms'', Ticknor and Company, pp. 160–62.</ref><ref>His father, eminent novelist [[Nathaniel Hawthorne]], saw it differently: "Have you ever read the novels of Anthony Trollope?" He asked his publisher, James T. Fields, in February 1860; "They precisely suit my taste; solid, substantial, written on strength of beef and through inspiration of ale, 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 its inhabitants going about their daily business, and not suspecting that they were made a show of." — Heddendorf, David (2013). "Anthony Trollope's Scarlet Letter," ''Sewanee Review'', Vol. 121, No. 3, p. 368.</ref>

[[Henry James]] also expressed mixed opinions of Trollope.<ref>Jones, Vivien (1982). "James and Trollope," ''The Review of English Studies'', Vol. 33, No. 131, pp. 278–294.</ref> The young James wrote some scathing reviews of Trollope's novels (''The Belton Estate'', for instance, he called "a stupid book, without a single thought or idea in it ... a sort of mental pabulum"). He also made it clear that he disliked Trollope's narrative method; Trollope's cheerful interpolations into his novels about how his storylines could take any twist their author wanted did not appeal to James's sense of artistic integrity. However, James thoroughly appreciated Trollope's attention to realistic detail, as he wrote in an essay shortly after the novelist's death:
<blockquote>His [Trollope's] great, his inestimable merit was a complete appreciation of the usual. ... [H]e ''felt'' all daily and immediate things as well as saw them; felt them in a simple, direct, salubrious way, with their sadness, their gladness, their charm, their comicality, all their obvious and measurable meanings. ... Trollope will remain one of the most trustworthy, though not one of the most eloquent, of the writers who have helped the heart of man to know itself. ... A race is fortunate when it has a good deal of the sort of imagination—of imaginative feeling—that had fallen to the share of Anthony Trollope; and in this possession our English race is not poor.<ref>James, Henry (1888). [https://archive.org/stream/partialportrait01jamegoog#page/n118/mode/2up "Anthony Trollope."] In ''Partial Portraits'', Macmillan and Co., pp. 100–01, 133.</ref></blockquote>

Writers such as [[William Thackeray]], [[George Eliot]] and [[Wilkie Collins]] admired and befriended Trollope, and Eliot noted that she could not have embarked on so ambitious a project as ''[[Middlemarch]]'' without the precedent set by Trollope in his own novels of the fictional—yet thoroughly alive—county of Barsetshire.<ref>Super, R. H. (1988), p. 412.</ref> Other contemporaries of Trollope praised his understanding of the quotidian world of institutions, official life, and daily business; he is one of the few novelists who find the office a creative environment.<ref>Sullivan, Ceri (2013). ''Literature in the Public Service: Sublime Bureaucracy'', Palgrave Macmillan, Ch. 3, pp. 65–99.</ref> [[W. H. Auden]] wrote of Trollope: "Of all novelists in any country, Trollope best understands the role of money. Compared with him, even [[Honoré de Balzac|Balzac]] is too romantic."<ref>Quoted in Wintle, Justin & Kenin, Richard, eds. (1978). [https://books.google.com/books?id=npE9AAAAIAAJ&pg=PA742 ''The Dictionary of Biographical Quotation''], p. 742. Routledge & Kegan Paul Ltd.</ref>

As trends in the world of the novel moved increasingly towards subjectivity and artistic experimentation, Trollope's standing with critics suffered. But [[Lord David Cecil]] noted in 1934 that "Trollope is still very much alive ... and among fastidious readers." He noted that Trollope was "conspicuously free from the most characteristic Victorian faults".<ref>[[Lord David Cecil]], ''Early Victorian Novelists – Essays in Revaluation'', p. 245</ref> In the 1940s, Trollopians made further attempts to resurrect his reputation; he enjoyed a critical renaissance in the 1960s, and again in the 1990s. Some critics today have a particular interest in Trollope's portrayal of women—he caused remarks even in his own day for his deep insight and sensitivity to the inner conflicts caused by the position of women in [[Victorian era|Victorian]] society.<ref>"Anthony Trollope reveals an amazing insight into the love and the motive of woman. In this detail he has no equal in the whole catalogue of British male novelists until we go as far back as Richardson. Trollope has an amazing comprehension of the young lady. Meredith cannot approach the ground held by Trollope here." –  Harvey, Alexander (1917). [https://archive.org/stream/williamdeanhowel00harvuoft#page/68/mode/2up "A Glance at Marcia."] In ''William Dean Howells: A Study of the Achievement of a Literary Artist'', B.W. Huebsch, p. 69.</ref><ref>Koets, Christiaan Coenraad (1933). ''Female Characters in the Works of Anthony Trollope'', Gouda, T. van Tilburg.</ref><ref>Hewitt, Margaret (1963). "Anthony Trollope: Historian and Sociologist," ''The British Journal of Sociology'', Vol. 14, No. 3, pp. 226–239.</ref><ref>Aitken, David (1974). "Anthony Trollope on 'the Genus Girl'," ''Nineteenth-Century Fiction'', Vol. 28, No. 4, pp. 417–434.</ref><ref>Kennedy, John Dorrance (1975). [https://archive.org/stream/trollopeswidowsb00kenn#page/n0/mode/2up ''Trollope's Widows, Beyond the Stereotypes of Maiden and Wife''], (PhD Dissertation), University of Florida.</ref>

In the early 1990s, interest in Trollope increased. A Trollope Society flourishes in the United Kingdom, as does its sister society in the United States.<ref>Allen, Brooke (1993). [http://www.city-journal.org/article02.php?aid=1465 "New York's Trollope Society,"] {{webarchive |url=https://web.archive.org/web/20130928214613/http://www.city-journal.org/article02.php?aid=1465 |date=28 September 2013 }} ''City Journal'', Autumn.</ref> In 2011, the [[University of Kansas]]'s Department of English, in collaboration with the Hall Center for the Humanities and in partnership with ''[[The Fortnightly Review]]'', began awarding an annual Trollope Prize. The Prize was established to focus attention on Trollope's work and career.

Notable fans have included [[Alec Guinness]], who never travelled without a Trollope novel; the former British prime ministers [[Harold Macmillan, Earl of Stockton|Harold Macmillan]]<ref>[[Peter Catterall]], "[http://www.cercles.com/n11/catterall.pdf The Prime Minister and His Trollope: Reading Harold Macmillan's Reading]", ''Cercles'': Occasional Papers Series (2004).</ref> and [[Sir John Major]]; the first Canadian prime minister, [[John A. Macdonald]]; the economist [[John Kenneth Galbraith]]; the merchant banker [[Siegmund George Warburg|Siegmund Warburg]], who said that "reading Anthony Trollope surpassed a university education";<ref>Chernow, Ron. The Warburgs: The Twentieth-Century Odyssey of a Remarkable Jewish Family. New York: Random House, 2003, p. 546.</ref> the English judge [[Lord Denning]]; the American novelists [[Sue Grafton]], [[Dominick Dunne]], and [[Timothy Hallinan]]; the poet [[Edward FitzGerald (poet)|Edward Fitzgerald]];<ref>Lewis, Monica C. (2010). "Anthony Trollope and the Voicing of Victorian Fiction," ''Nineteenth-Century Literature'', Vol. 65, No. 2, p. 141.</ref> the artist [[Edward Gorey]], who kept a complete set of his books; the American author [[Robert Caro]];<ref>[https://www.nysoclib.org/about/robert-caro The New York Society Library: "About Us"]</ref> the playwright [[David Mamet]];<ref>{{cite news|url=https://www.wsj.com/articles/charles-dickens-makes-me-want-to-throw-up-1500677262|title=Charles Dickens Makes Me Want to Throw Up|first=David|last=Mamet|newspaper=Wall Street Journal|date=21 July 2017}}</ref> the soap opera writer [[Harding Lemay]]; the screenwriter and novelist [[Julian Fellowes]]; liberal political philosopher [[Anthony de Jasay]] and theologian [[Stanley Hauerwas]].