Anthony Trorop

Anthony Trollope (1815–1882) was one of the most prolific and successful English novelists of the Victorian era. Born in London and raised in genteel poverty, he spent over thirty years working for the British Post Office, during which he is credited with introducing the familiar red pillar box. His disciplined habit of writing 2,000 words each morning before work enabled him to publish forty-seven novels along with numerous short stories and travel books.

Trollope is best remembered for two great fictional sequences. The Chronicles of Barsetshire, beginning with The Warden (1855) and including the celebrated Barchester Towers (1857) and The Last Chronicle of Barset (1867), offers a warm, wry portrait of clerical life in an imagined cathedral town. The Palliser novels, including Phineas Finn (1869) and The Prime Minister (1876), dissect the machinery of parliamentary politics with equal skill.

His masterpiece, The Way We Live Now (1875), remains a scathing satire of financial greed and social hypocrisy. Although his reputation suffered after his frank posthumous Autobiography (1883) revealed his businesslike methods, Trollope is now admired for his psychological insight, moral complexity, and vivid, believable characters, securing his place among the great English realists.