Graham Handley's 'Anthony Trollope' 1999

 

Alan Sutton first edition (paperback) - 1999

I read this 'pocket' biography at one sitting, on a sunny mid-May afternoon relaxing on a recliner on the front lawn. The author, Graham Handley, has pedigree - as the editor of Trollope the Traveller and seven of the novels, as well as contributing to the Oxford Readers' Companion to Anthony Trollope and publishing a critical study of Barchester Towers, Here he has provided a stimulating aperitif for fuller fare on the great man. As I have remarked in a previous Blog, I am very partial to a Trollope; The Warden and Barchester Towers still figure highly in my 40 Best Books. I hope it won't be too long before I re-read them, along with Dr. Thorne, Framley Parsonage, The Small House at Allington and The Last Chronicle of Barset.

Hadley packs a tremendous amount of information and comment into his 103 pages. I start with his excellent Conclusion:

Trollope's characteristics were many, various, warm and at times overpowering. Perhaps his outstanding quality was his critical zest for experience which embraced practical life experience and the life of the imagination, both being charged with his abundant and remarkable energy. He worked hard, he wrote hard, he played hard. A conservative who loved the good things in life, he was also a radical who queried their abuse...he loved engaging with people and he created people; he hated corruption, and attacked it uncompromisingly in an age which witnessed gigantic swindles...he loved tradition and an ordered and moral way of life, but he was receptive to change.

A few points Hadley reminded me of: the fact that Trollope regarded Thackeray very highly; his friendship with George Eliot; the importance of the American Kate Field in his life; the effect of his year in Ireland; his political incorrect (for readers of today) views on race in his writing on the West Indies, which he visited in 1858-9; his failed attempt to get elected as an M.P. for Beverley and its effect on him; his increasing concern about his weight. I also hadn't fully realised the failings of his son Frederick in Australia, which Trollope visited on two occasions. 

Reading the biography has not only made me determined to read the Barchester series again, but to try for the first time the two Irish novels, Orley Farm and the Palliser series. So, so much to imbibe!