The Letters of Anthony Trollope

This fully annotated edition of Trollope’s letters makes available more than twice the number previously published, containing 1,826 letters of Victorian England’s busiest writer. In a manner that is straightforward and less consciously literary than that of most writers, these letters, though touching only obliquely on his inner life, reveal in their sum Trollope himself: honest, frank, blunt, crusty, gallant, playful, quick to take offence and quick to be reconciled, kind, generous, intelligent, self-deprecating but with a strong belief in his own ability and worth. Trollope wrote some seventy books, and much of his correspondence is with publishers; indeed, a list of his publishers reads like a roll call of the great and not-so-great Victorian publishing houses. Trollope’s letters to them reveal much about his own work and about Victorian publishing practices. Other activities also generated illuminating correspondence. The letters clarify, supplement, and correct the crafted view of his life as given in his Autobiography and underscore the relevance of his private life to his published work.