Anthony Trollope (1815–82) was an English novelist. He was the most prolific of the great Victorian novelists and wrote 47 novels and 42 short stories. Trollope’s other great claim to fame was his introduction of postal pillar-boxes in the 1850s; he also worked for the General Post Office 1834–67.
Many of Trollope’s novels originated from daydreams that he had as a child. He came to eminence in the 1860s with the serializations he published in magazines such as the Cornhill Magazine. He sealed his reputation as a remarkable writer with his fourth novel, The Warden (1855,) the first of the six Barsetshire novels, which also include Barchester Towers (1857) and The Last Chronicle of Barset (1867.) Set in a fictional country called Barsetshire, these novels portray a stable rural society of recurring curates and landed gentry.
Trollope also published the political novel sequence, the Palliser novels, which included Can You Forgive Her? (1865) and The Way We Live Now (1875;) the latter was a scathing 100-chapter satire of English greed.
Trollope established the novel sequence in English fiction. This literary form, known by the metaphor roman-fleuve, comprises the leisurely description of the lives of closely related middle-class Victorians; Honoré de Balzac used this literary form previously and separately.
More: Wikipedia • READ: Works by Anthony Trollope
Nobody holds a good opinion of a man who has a low opinion of himself.
—Anthony Trollope
Topics: Character, Realization, Awareness, Acceptance, Confidence, Opinion, Assurance
He must have known me if he had seen me as he was wont to see me, for he was in the habit of flogging me constantly. Perhaps he did not recognize me by my face.
—Anthony Trollope
Topics: Punishment
The habit of reading is the only enjoyment in which there is no alloy; it lasts when all other pleasures fade.
—Anthony Trollope
Topics: Habit, Reading
I hold that gentleman to be the best-dressed whose dress no one observes.
—Anthony Trollope
Topics: Fashion
It’s dogged as does it.
—Anthony Trollope
Topics: Perseverance
No man thinks there is much ado about nothing when the ado is about himself.
—Anthony Trollope
I judge a man by his actions with men, much more than by his declarations Godwards — When I find him to be envious, carping, spiteful, hating the successes of others, and complaining that the world has never done enough for him, I am apt to doubt whether his humility before God will atone for his want of manliness.
—Anthony Trollope
Topics: Religion
Success is the necessary misfortune of life, but it is only to the very unfortunate that it comes early.
—Anthony Trollope
Topics: Success, Success & Failure
Don’t let love interfere with your appetite. It never does with mine.
—Anthony Trollope
Marvelous is the power which can be exercised, almost unconsciously, over a company, or an individual, or even upon a crowd by one person gifted with good temper, good digestion, good intellects, and good looks.
—Anthony Trollope
Topics: Charm
Never think that you’re not good enough yourself. A man should never think that. People will take you very much at your own reckoning.
—Anthony Trollope
It has become a certainty now that if you will only advertise sufficiently you may make a fortune by selling anything.
—Anthony Trollope
Topics: Advertising
And above all things, never think that you’re not good enough yourself. A man should never think that. My belief is that in life people will take you at your own reckoning.
—Anthony Trollope
Topics: Belief
The satirist who writes nothing but satire should write but little — or it will seem that his satire springs rather from his own caustic nature than from the sins of the world in which he lives.
—Anthony Trollope
Topics: Cynicism
This habit of reading … is your pass to the most perfect pleasure that God has prepared for his creatures. It lasts when all other pleasures fade. It will make your hours pleasant to you as long as you live.
—Anthony Trollope
Topics: Books, Reading
As to that leisure evening of life, I must say that I do not want it. I can conceive of no contentment of which toil is not to be the immediate parent.
—Anthony Trollope
Topics: Aging, Retirement
Wondering Whom to Read Next?
William Makepeace Thackeray English Novelist
George Gissing English Novelist
Evelyn Waugh British Novelist, Satirist
Jane Austen English Novelist
Samuel Richardson English Novelist
D. H. Lawrence English Novelist
Henry Fielding English Novelist
Virginia Woolf English Novelist
Anthony Powell English Novelist
George Borrow English Writer, Traveler