ANTHONY TROLLOPE*S LITERARY REPUTATION; ITS DEVELOPMENT AND VALIDITY by ELLA KATHLEEN GRANT A Thesis Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for. the Degree of Master of Arts in the Department of English The University of British Columbia, October, 1950. This essay attempts to trace the course of Anthony Trollope's literary reputation; to suggest some explan• ations for the various spurts and sudden declines of his popularity among readers and esteem among critics; and to prove that his mid-twentieth century position is not a just one. Drawing largely on Trollope's Autobiography, contemp• orary reviews and essays on his work, and references to it in letters and memoirs, the first chapter describes Trollope's writing career, showing him rising to popu• larity in the late fifties and early sixties as a favour• ite among readers tired of sensational fiction, becoming a byword for commonplace mediocrity in the seventies, and finally, two years before his death, regaining much of his former eminence among older readers and conservative critics. Throughout the chapter a distinction is drawn between the two worlds with which Trollope deals, Barset- shire and materialist society, and the peculiarly dual nature of his work is emphasized. Chapter II is largely concerned with the vicissitudes that Trollope's reputation has encountered since the post• humous publication of his autobiography. During the de• cade following his death he is shown as an object of comp• lete contempt to the Art for Art's Sake school, finally rescued around the turn of the century by critics reacting against the ideals of his detractors. There follows a description of his unsteady rise to popularity and es• teem through the next forty years, and of his extraordi• nary popularity during the Second World War. Two esti• mates of Trollope emerge from the controversy: the one which praises him as the supreme escapist creator of Bar- setshire; and the one which exalts the courage and hone• sty of the Autobiography. It is suggested that neither of these can provide a just evaluation of Trollope's importance as a novelist, since the first ignores the greater part of his work and the second concentrates on the man rather than upon his novels. The final portion of this chapter is devoted to a brief discussion of certain of Trollope's major novels, and argues that the evidence derived is sufficient to prove both these gradually developed views of Anthony Trollope invalid as estimates of his worth as a novelist. ANTHONY TROLLOPE* S LITERARY REFUTATION I.Anthony Trollope In his own Time. In 1847 appeared! the first novel from the pen of Anthony Trollope, who nearly thirty years later could claim a record of literary performance "more in amount than the works of any other living English author."1 As a beginning p for such a lengthy career The Macdermotts of Ballycloran was not auspicious. Published by Newby at the urging of Fanny Trollope, still a popular novelist herself, the book was promptly ignored by readers and critics alike. Trollope recalls that he never heard another word about it from his publisher^, while the one critical notice which appeared reflects the reception that any Irish novel not of the; rollicking Charles Lever variety was likely to get from an England weary of gloomy news of the famine of r47: ...an Irish novel has become to us something like the haunted chest in the corner of Merchant Abudak1s apartment, which even when closed he knew to contain a shape of Terror and a voice of Woe... fThe Macdermotts of Ballycloran: is)a tale of ruin, crime and sorrow... ft told with power and pathos enough to darken the sun• shine of the most cheerful reader....Twenty years ago "The Macdermotts" would have made a reputation for its author^....4 Trollope, Anthony, An Autobiography, Oxford, Oxford University- Press,1946,"World*s Classics" Series,p.331. All subsequent references are to this; edition. 2"Trollope, Anthony; The Macdermotts of Ballycloran,, 3; vols, London, Newby, 1847. 3 Trollope,, Auto., p.68. 4 Athenaeum. May 15.1847.p.517. - 2 - \ Such a reception might have proved chilling to most young writers,, but Trollope was no ordinary budding author. The Trollopes were, as the Stebbinses have recently called them, 5 "a writing family." In the forties Anthony*s mother, brother and sister were all more or less successful authors, and with this family background he had from the very beginning a firmly matter-of-fact approach to the writing of novels, and a real• istic attitude towards his probable success at first. Persever• ing as a matter of course, he next produced The Kellys and the 7 O'Kellys, which was published by Colburn, long Fanny Trollope's published, in 1848, with much the same result as had met The Macdermotts. "The book was not only not read, but was never heard of, - at any rate in Ireland."8 In England the situation was only slightly different: the book was not much read,(Colburn reported the same of 140 copies); while anyone who happened to be reading the lesser notices In the Times and the Athenaeum in the summer of 1848 would have met with accounts of it which would have fairly warned him against rushing out to purchase one of the remaining 235 copies of that first edition. The Times Trollope recalls as comparing the novel to a leg of 9 mutton "...substantial, but a little coarse", while the Athen• aeum made much of the "unpleasantness" of the subject matter, a brotherrs cruelty to his sister, though noting with approval 5 Stebbins, Lucy Poate, and Stebbins, Richard Poate, The Trollopes: The Chronicle of a Writing Family,New. York, Columbia University Press,- 1945. 6 Trollope, Auto., pp. 48,62-63, 68-69. 7 Trollope, Anthony, The Kellys and the O'Kellys: or Landlords and Tenants, 3 vols., London, Colburn, 1848. 8 Trollope, Auto., p.69. 9 Trollope, Auto., p.71. - 3 - that "Humour pervades its scenes, - and it is the true ' "emerald" humour;.. .""^ The failure of this second Irish novel resulted In a letter from Colburn stating that "...It is Impossible... to give any encouragement to you to proceed in novel-writing...." and yet paradoxically requesting " a sight of" the novel f IB La Vendee which he had heard was nearly finished. This historical novel is the first of Trollope's attempts to give the public what he thought it wanted. Colburm too seems to have had higher hopes of this production, since he paid t 20 down and agreed to pay a further E30 when 350 copies had been 13 sold, and £50 should sales within six months reach 450. How• ever, even the lure of an historical subject did not save La Vendee from the fate of its Irish predecessors. Sales did not • mount, and even the faithful Athenaeum considered the book rather an unnecessary venture, in view of the excellent eye- 14 witness accounts extant of the subject. At this point Trollope began to consider not whether he should stop writing, but whether he should strike out in some new direction. His casting about produced a series of letters defending the Government's Irish policy in the Examiner; a play, The Noble Jilt, which was submitted for criticism to an old friend, George Bart ley, the actor, and condemned without mercy; and a fragment of a handbook to Ireland. All of. these 1QAthenaeum. July 15, 1848, p.701. •^Trollope, Auto..p.72. 2 l Trollope % Anthony, LaVendee« An Historical Roman ce. 3 vols., London, Colburn, 1850. 13Trollope, Auto., p.72. 14 Athenaeum. July 6, 1850, p. 708. are of no importance in the general scheme of Trollope* s; development, except that they illustrate an aspect of his personality which becomes quite apparent later in his career, his readiness to attempt something different, either to demon strate versatility, or to catch the attention of the public. The years from 1850-1852 were In truth too fully taken up with Post Office work to allow Trollope mucin time for furthering his second career. These were the years of the postal survey of his section of Ireland and then of "Devonshire, Cornwall, Somersetshire, the greater part of Dorsetshire, the Channel Islands, part of Oxfordshire, Wilt• shire, Gloucestershire, Worcestershire, Herefordshire, Mon- 15 mouthshire, and the six southern Welsh counties"-: During these travels he had occasion to visit Salisbury, and there conceived the idea for a new novel which was to mark the real 16 beginning of his literary career. This work. The Warden. was begun in 1852, finished in 1853, and published In 1855. Comparatively speaking The Warden was at once a success, critically if not popularly. Like the Irish novels, it was a book with a purpose: I had been struck by two opposite evils,- or what seemed to me to be evils,-and with an absence of all art - judgment in such matters, I thought I might; be able to expose them, or rather to describe them, both in one and the same tale. The first evil was the possession by the Church of certain funds and endowments which had been intended for charitable purposes, but which had been allowed to become; income for idle church dignitaries... .The second evil was its very apposite. Though I had been much struck by the injustice above described, I had also often ^ been angered by the undeserved severity of the Trollope, Auto., pp.80 - 81. Trollope, Anthony, The Warden. 1 vol.,London,Longman,1855 - 5 - newspapers towards the recipients of such incomes, who could hardly be considered to be the chief sinners in the matter.17 Nevertheless, the problem with which The Warden dealt was one much In the minds of the English public at the time.