Trollope, the name of a family which has produced several eminent English authors.—MRS FRANCES TROLLOPE was a novelist and miscellaneous writer. Born in 1780, the daughter of the Rev. William Milton, vicar of Heckfield, Hants, in 1809 she was married to Mr Thomas Anthony Trollope, a barrister-at-law and fellow of New College. In 1829, her husband having fallen into straitened circumstances, she went to America; and during a three years' residence in the United States she amassed the materials of her first book, Domestic Manners of the Americans, published in 1832. This work attracted great attention, and the severity of certain of its strictures was much resented by Americans. From this time forward the literary activity of Mrs Trollope was nearly uninterrupted; novels of society and impressions of travel make up the sum of her works. Of her novels the most successful is, perhaps, The Widow Barnaby (1839), with its sequel, The Widow Married (1840), followed by The Barnabys in America. Mrs Trollope was a woman of strong talent, and her works are full of shrewd observation and true, if at times somewhat coarse, humour. They were popular in their day, and very well deserved their popularity; but already they are well-nigh forgotten. During the life of her husband Mrs Trollope resided chiefly at Harrow. Latterly much of her time was passed in Italy with her eldest son; she died at Florence, 6th October 1863. See Life by her daughter (1895).
Her son, THOMAS ADOLPHUS TROLLOPE (29th April 1810–13th November 1892), was educated at Winchester and Oxford, and in 1841 settled in Italy. He is favourably known by his Girlhood of Cathrine de' Medici, A Decade of Italian Women, and a number of novels such as La Beata, Marietta, Lindisfarn Chase, Gemma, The Garstangs, The Dream Numbers. He has also written a History of Florence, the Life of Pius IX., Sketches of French History, &c. His second wife, Mrs Frances Eleanor Trollope, is known as the author of Aunt Margaret's Trouble (1866), Black Spirits and White (1877), That Unfortunate Marriage (1888), and, with her husband, The Homes and Haunts of the Italian Poets (1881). See his autobiographical What I Remember (3 vols. 1887–89).
The third son, ANTHONY TROLLOPE, one of the most popular of recent novelists, was born 24th April 1815, and was educated at Winchester and Harrow. In 1841 he obtained a post as clerk to a surveyor of post-offices in Ireland. Here he acquired the fondness for hunting which never left him, married (1844), and began writing novels; and while filling more responsible official situations in the Post-office, he found, or made, leisure to amuse the public with a long series of novels, many of them of very remarkable merit. The Kellys and the O'Kellys (1848) was one of the first three novels he wrote, and like the other two fell dead from the press, although a graphic and accurate picture of the Irish life of the time. The first work which decisively drew attention, The Warden (1855), was followed by a continuation, Barchester Towers, which remains, perhaps, the cleverest of all his books. In rapid succession to these came Doctor Thorne, The Bertrams, The Three Clerks, Castle Richmond, Frankly Parsonage (originally published in the Cornhill Magazine), Orley Farm, The Small House at Allington (contributed to the Cornhill Magazine), Rachel Ray, Miss Mackenzie, Can You Forgive Her? The Claverings, and The Last Chronicle of Barset (1867)—one of his best novels—besides many others. He was a zealous and valuable servant of the Post-office, and resigned his position as a surveyor (1867) three or four years only before he would have been entitled to a retiring pension, because he felt that his increasing literary work made it impossible for him, even with his extraordinarily unflagging industry, to discharge his official duties with efficiency. He wrote much for the magazines, and was the first editor of St Paul's; he once stood for parliament and was defeated. Post-office work had taken him to the West Indies, Egypt, and the United States; latterly he travelled in Australia and South Africa; so that he acquired materials for books on all these countries. Novels continued to be produced with astonishing regularity and frequency, according to a business-like method he has described in his autobiography. Amongst novels written subsequent to his resignation were Phineas Finn (1869), Ralph the Heir, The Golden Lion of Granpere, Phineas Redux, John Caldigate, Ayala's Angel, The Fixed Period, and An Old Man's Love (1884). Other works were a sketch of Thackeray ('Men of Letters' series, 1879), a Life of Cicero (2 vols. 1880)—a task for which his powers were inadequate—and a short Life of Palmerston in ('English Political Leaders,' 1882). Trollope died 6th December 1882, and in 1883 appeared his interesting Autobiography (edited by his son, H. M. Trollope, who has also published novels and other works). Trollope sketches the superficial aspects of society with a charming lightness, and his works are unfailingly agreeable and amusing. Many of the portraits in the extensive gallery he has left us, especially of the residents in the cathedral close, are permanently fixed in the memory of all readers of English literature.