{"id":91079,"date":"2026-07-27T08:26:08","date_gmt":"2026-07-27T08:26:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/91079\/"},"modified":"2026-07-27T08:26:08","modified_gmt":"2026-07-27T08:26:08","slug":"why-should-we-read-anthony-trollope","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/91079\/","title":{"rendered":"Why Should We Read Anthony Trollope?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Think you\u2019re a Jane Austen<\/a> fan? Well, Anthony Trollope, author of<\/a> 47 novels \u2013 including his best-known Chronicles of Barsetshire \u2013 might put you to shame. <\/p>\n

Aged 19, the<\/a> \u201cprolific\u201d Victorian author, who was born two years before the Sense and Sensibility writer died, said:<\/a> \u201cI had already made up my mind that Pride and Prejudice was the best novel in the English language\u201d.<\/p>\n

While other works like Ivanhoe also took some of that claim, later, he would call Austen his \u201cchief favourite among novelists\u201d. He dubbed her books \u201cfaultless\u201d despite his sometimes-critical personal notes<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Still, like his fellow Victorian Elizabeth Gaskell<\/a>, it\u2019s safe to say Trollope is not generally as well-known as his literary idol (few are, to be fair).<\/p>\n

Here, we spoke to Dr Dinah Birch<\/a>, an Emeritus Professor of English at the University of Liverpool and the author of Anthony Trollope: A Very Short Introduction<\/a>, about why (and whether) more of us should read his work.<\/p>\n

Who was Anthony Trollope? <\/p>\n

He was the son<\/a> of a barrister and attempted<\/a> gentleman farmer, Thomas Anthony Trollope. His mother was a parson\u2019s daughter, Frances Trollope. His dad had come to expect a huge inheritance from an older uncle, but that fell through when the relative got married. <\/p>\n

Like Austen, Dr Birch said, he existed on the margins of power and money (Austen\u2019s genteel family were plagued<\/a> by financial crises, not least her minister father\u2019s sudden death).<\/p>\n

George Orwell might be considered a member of this embarrassed camp<\/a>, too.<\/p>\n

These were \u201cwriters who had a certain rank, a social rank, because of their family connections \u2013 in Trollope\u2019s case, expectations of inheritance. But they were not working class, they were not poor people,\u201d the professor explained.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe was the son of a gentleman and with expectations of becoming a gentleman… but [had] no money whatsoever… And he, I think, is, is really very eloquent on the suffering that that brings upon a boy, that he\u2019s mixing with people that have money and he hasn\u2019t money.\u201d <\/p>\n

His troubled school years saw him move between the elite Winchester and Harrow institutions; in 1834, his family fled <\/a>to Bruges to escape creditors.<\/p>\n

That same year, Trollope began a career as a junior clerk in the London General Post Office. \u201cHe was the man who introduced the idea<\/a> of the pillar box,\u201d Dr Birch told us.<\/p>\n

He married Rose Heseltine in 1844 after being transferred to Ireland in 1841. They went on to have two children.<\/p>\n

In 1843, Trollope began writing his first novel, The Macdermots of Ballycloran, which was published in 1847. His first major success, The Warden, was published in 1855.<\/p>\n

He moved to Cork a year before Ireland\u2019s Great Famine<\/a> began in 1845. <\/p>\n

The author \u201ctravelled a lot for the Post Office and he wrote travel books on the basis of that,\u201d Dr Birch said.<\/p>\n

\u201cMany of the scenes that he does have in his novels \u2013 because he doesn\u2019t always just write about the English middle classes at home, particularly in his later books \u2013 are drawn from his experiences in the Post Office.\u201d<\/p>\n

Trollope moved back to England in 1859 and resigned from the Civil Service in 1867.<\/p>\n

He stood for MP as the Liberal candidate for Beverley, Yorkshire in 1868 and came last. The author died in a nursing home in 1882. <\/p>\n

Who did Trollope influence? <\/p>\n

While I was reading The Warden, I was struck by how like George Eliot his treatment of social issues seemed to be. <\/p>\n

And according to Dr Birch, there\u2019s good reason for that. <\/p>\n

The pair met<\/a> \u2013 and though Trollope seems to have<\/a> had some harsh words about the Middlemarch writer, \u201cGeorge Eliot really responded to his version of realism because he is, in a sense, the great social realist\u201d.<\/p>\n

Dr Birch also thinks he probably influenced Henry James, which might have \u201cembarrassed\u201d the The Europeans author, who \u201cwanted to be a very different writer and was a very different writer.\u201d <\/p>\n

(James called<\/a> the much-maligned author\u2019s work \u201cstupid\u201d, though conceded he was a \u201cborn story-teller\u201d \u2013 they met once on a ship from New York to London).<\/p>\n

But a light critical dust of James\u2019 works may still reveal Trollope\u2019s fingerprints, especially in his treatment of American women and his combination of political insight and social observation, per Dr Birch.<\/p>\n

And Trollope, whose famous Chronicles of Barsetshire follow \u201crecurrent characters that we see developing from novel to novel\u201d, could have inspired a range of writers who wrote in a similar style too.<\/p>\n

\u201cFor instance, Anthony Powell\u2019s Dance to the Music of Time owes a lot to Trollope from that point of view. Or John Galsworthy\u2019s Forsyte Saga, which of course very famously was televised.\u201d<\/p>\n

Even detective and crime writers might have learned a thing or two from the writer: not only do these track characters over multiple volumes, \u00e0 la Trollope, but \u201cthere\u2019s a lot of crime in Trollope, and the detection of crime\u201d.<\/p>\n

Lastly, his \u201ccourtship plots [which] kind of scan different social classes and social ranks in a way that\u2019s not quite true of Jane Austen\u201d could have reached untold later romance writers.<\/p>\n

Why should I read Anthony Trollope?<\/p>\n

Right \u2013 we know he was an interesting person, and that he might have influenced other impressive writers. <\/p>\n

But why should we read him in 2026?<\/p>\n

Well, here\u2019s one rather practical reason: fans of the author won\u2019t run out of material any time soon.<\/p>\n

While \u201cthere aren\u2019t many Jane Austen novels,\u201d Dr Birch said \u2013 only six<\/a> \u2013 \u201cwith Trollope, you can keep going… he\u2019s a huge and extensive writer in many different genres\u201d. <\/p>\n

Of course, an abundance of text is no good unless it\u2019s worth reading. But happily, Dr Dinah tells us, it still very much is. <\/p>\n

Though she pointed out people have always read Trollope, \u201cHe is taking centre stage more often as people get more interested, I think, in his politics, including gender politics, his liberalism, and also his narrative techniques, which were very flexible and very influential.<\/p>\n

\u201cFor me, the central reason is that he is so good on sex and money and power. And those are preoccupations that were obviously very important to the Victorians, but they\u2019ve not exactly disappeared from view, have they?\u201d <\/p>\n

Take, for instance, his depictions of women and their place in society.<\/p>\n

\u201cTrollope was very sensitive to the problems that imposed because an unmarried woman, if there was no family inheritance or an insufficient one, was in a very exposed position,\u201d the professor said.<\/p>\n

His explorations of marriage, and the \u2013 notably explicit \u2013 negotiations around it might have been considered \u201ca bit vulgar\u201d in his time, but now read as \u201cfresh and very contemporary\u201d. <\/p>\n

Plus, \u201cOne of the reasons for reading Trollope is that he is not a novelist who\u2019s fixed in stone,\u201d said Dr Birch.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe changes his mind about a number of things, which is actually not as common as you might think in novels… I mean, he began very firmly of the view that it\u2019s best for women to be wives and mothers, but he shifted a bit from that as he got older and met new women who were leading different lives.\u201d<\/p>\n

All that said, worthiness alone won\u2019t get you through hundreds of pages \u2013 and \u201cpeople do get addicted to Trollope,\u201d the professor said (it happened to me!).<\/p>\n

\u201cThey don\u2019t do that because they think it\u2019s in some way worthy and virtuous or whatever, like a task. They do it because they can\u2019t stop.\u201d<\/p>\n

Which Anthony Trollope books should I start with? <\/p>\n

Good news: Dr Birch said he doesn\u2019t really have any \u201cdud\u201d books.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn naming the best Trollope novels, everyone gives you a different title,\u201d she stated.<\/p>\n

Still, \u201cthere\u2019s something to be said for starting\u201d with his best-known series, The Chronicles of Barsetshire. <\/p>\n

The Warden, Barchester Towers, Doctor Thorne, Framley Parsonage, The Small House at Allington, The Last Chronicle of Barset. <\/p>\n

But don\u2019t feel beholden to that order.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou don\u2019t have to start with The Warden, which in some ways is not characteristic of Trollope,\u201d the expert said. Barchester Towers may be a better bet, or The Small House at Allington.<\/p>\n

\u201cDoctor Thorne is a brilliant novel with a very brilliant plot, and in a way, kind of self-contained \u2013 you don\u2019t have to have read the rest of The Barsetshire Chronicles\u201d.<\/p>\n

And the Palliser novels, involving: <\/p>\n

Can You Forgive Her?,Phineas Finn,The Eustace Diamonds, Phineas Redux, The Prime Minister, and The Duke\u2019s Children <\/p>\n

are also \u201cvery strong\u201d.<\/p>\n

Once you start, Dr Birch ended, \u201cyou may find it\u2019s not so easy to stop\u201d.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Think you\u2019re a Jane Austen fan? Well, Anthony Trollope, author of 47 novels \u2013 including his best-known Chronicles…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":91080,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[4],"tags":[28162,38964,10929,5,6],"class_list":["post-91079","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-uk","tag-evergreen","tag-jane-austen","tag-reading","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@UnitedKingdom\/116990993206004432","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/91079","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=91079"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/91079\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/91080"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=91079"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=91079"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=91079"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}