'Sex, Money, And Power': The Victorian Austen Fanboy I Can't Stop Reading

Think you’re a https://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/news/jane-austen/">Jane Austen fan?

Well, Anthony Trollope, https://trollopesociety.org/trollope/timelines/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">author of 47 novels – including his best-known Chronicles of Barsetshire – might put you to shame. 

https://trollopesociety.org/trollope/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Aged 19, the “prolific” Victorian author, who was born two years before the Sense and Sensibility writer died, https://www.online-literature.com/anthony-trollope/trollope-autobiography/3/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">said: “I had already made up my mind that Pride and Prejudice was the best novel in the English language”.

While other works like Ivanhoe also took some of that claim, later, he would call Austen his “chief favourite among novelists”.

He dubbed her books “faultless” despite https://jasna.org/publications-2/persuasions-online/volume-43-no-1/hussain/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">his sometimes-critical personal notes.

Still, like his fellow Victorian https://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/entry/elizabeth-gaskell-jane-austen-charlotte-bronte_uk_69ef4e6ee4b08330e41dc859">Elizabeth Gaskell, it’s safe to say Trollope is not generally as well-known as his literary idol (few are, to be fair).

Here, we spoke to https://www.liverpool.ac.uk/people/dinah-birch" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Dr Dinah Birch, an Emeritus Professor of English at the University of Liverpool and the author of https://global.oup.com/academic/product/anthony-trollope-9780192845627?cc=gb&lang=en&" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Anthony Trollope: A Very Short Introduction, about why (and whether) more of us should read his work.

Who was Anthony Trollope? 

https://trollopesociety.org/trollope/youth/background/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">He was the son of a barrister and https://trollopesociety.org/trollope/youth/background/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">attempted gentleman farmer, Thomas Anthony Trollope.

His mother was a parson’s daughter, Frances Trollope.

His dad had come to expect a huge inheritance from an older uncle, but that fell through when the relative got married. 

Like Austen, Dr Birch said, he existed on the margins of power and money (Austen’s genteel family https://janeausten.co.uk/blogs/jane-austen-life/the-effects-of-the-familys-misfortunes-on-jane-austens-death?srsltid=AfmBOoqiO2LQWjWnpBWZ1nV_3R_HeubYhyoUpsBjMTUdOpSKMQoapN0E" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">were plagued by financial crises, not least her minister father’s sudden death).

George Orwell might be considered a member of this https://orwellsociety.com/that-frightful-drilling/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">embarrassed camp, too.

These were “writers who had a certain rank, a social rank, because of their family connections – in Trollope’s case, expectations of inheritance.

But they were not working class, they were not poor people,” the professor explained.

“He was the son of a gentleman and with expectations of becoming a gentleman... but [had] no money whatsoever...

And he, I think, is, is really very eloquent on the suffering that that brings upon a boy, that he’s mixing with people that have money and he hasn’t money.” 

His troubled school years saw him move between the elite Winchester and Harrow institutions; in 1834, https://trollopesociety.org/trollope/timelines/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">his family fled to Bruges to escape creditors.

That same year, Trollope began a career as a junior clerk in the London General Post Office. “He was the man who https://trollopesociety.org/trollope/post-office-career/pillar-boxes/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">introduced the idea of the pillar box,” Dr Birch told us.

He married Rose Heseltine in 1844 after being transferred to Ireland in 1841.

They went on to have two children.

In 1843, Trollope began writing his first novel, The Macdermots of Ballycloran, which was published in 1847.

His first major success, The Warden, was published in 1855.

He moved to Cork a year before https://www.parliament.uk/about/living-heritage/evolutionofparliament/legislativescrutiny/parliamentandireland/overview/the-great-famine/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Ireland’s Great Famine began in 1845. 

The author “travelled a lot for the Post Office and he wrote travel books on the basis of that,” Dr Birch said.

“Many of the scenes that he does have in his novels – because he doesn’t always just write about the English middle classes at home, particularly in his later books – are drawn from his experiences in the Post Office.”

Trollope moved back to England in 1859 and resigned from the Civil Service in 1867.

He stood for MP as the Liberal candidate for Beverley, Yorkshire in 1868 and came last.

The author died in a nursing home in 1882. 

Who did Trollope influence? 

While I was reading The Warden, I was struck by how like George Eliot his treatment of social issues seemed to be. 

And according to Dr Birch, there’s good reason for that. 

https://www.georgeeliotarchive.org/items/show/2587" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">The pair met – and though Trollope https://www.georgeeliotarchive.org/items/show/2587" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">seems to have had some harsh words about the Middlemarch writer, “George Eliot really responded to his version of realism because he is, in a sense, the great social realist”.

Dr Birch also thinks he probably influenced Henry James, which might have “embarrassed” the The Europeans author, who “wanted to be a very different writer and was a very different writer.” 

(https://newcriterion.com/article/a-novelist-who-hunted-the-fox-anthony-trollope-today/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">James called the much-maligned author’s work “stupid”, though conceded he was a “born story-teller” – they met once on a ship from New York to London).

But a light critical dust of James’ works may still reveal Trollope’s fingerprints, especially in his treatment of American women and his combination of political insight and social observation, per Dr Birch.

And Trollope, whose famous Chronicles of Barsetshire follow “recurrent characters that we see developing from novel to novel”, could have inspired a range of writers who wrote in a similar style too.

“For instance, Anthony Powell’s Dance to the Music of Time owes a lot to Trollope from that point of view.

Or John Galsworthy’s Forsyte Saga, which of course very famously was televised.”

Even detective and crime writers might have learned a thing or two from the writer: not only do these track characters over multiple volumes, à la Trollope, but “there’s a lot of crime in Trollope, and the detection of crime”.

Lastly, his “courtship plots [which] kind of scan different social classes and social ranks in a way that’s not quite true of Jane Austen” could have reached untold later romance writers.

Why should I read Anthony Trollope?

Right – we know he was an interesting person, and that he might have influenced other impressive writers. 

But why should we read him in 2026?

Well, here’s one rather practical reason: fans of the author won’t run out of material any time soon.

While “there aren’t many Jane Austen novels,” Dr Birch said – https://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/entry/jane-austen-books-changed-how-i-see-her_uk_68bea03ee4b01dc916386c0a">only six – “with Trollope, you can keep going... he’s a huge and extensive writer in many different genres”. 

Of course, an abundance of text is no good unless it’s worth reading.

But happily, Dr Dinah tells us, it still very much is. 

Though she pointed out people have always read Trollope, “He is taking centre stage more often as people get more interested, I think, in his politics, including gender politics, his liberalism, and also his narrative techniques, which were very flexible and very influential.

“For me, the central reason is that he is so good on sex and money and power.

And those are preoccupations that were obviously very important to the Victorians, but they’ve not exactly disappeared from view, have they?” 

Take, for instance, his depictions of women and their place in society.

“Trollope was very sensitive to the problems that imposed because an unmarried woman, if there was no family inheritance or an insufficient one, was in a very exposed position,” the professor said.

His explorations of marriage, and the – notably explicit – negotiations around it might have been considered “a bit vulgar” in his time, but now read as “fresh and very contemporary”. 

Plus, “One of the reasons for reading Trollope is that he is not a novelist who’s fixed in stone,” said Dr Birch.

“He changes his mind about a number of things, which is actually not as common as you might think in novels...

I mean, he began very firmly of the view that it’s best for women to be wives and mothers, but he shifted a bit from that as he got older and met new women who were leading different lives.”

All that said, worthiness alone won’t get you through hundreds of pages – and “people do get addicted to Trollope,” the professor said (it happened to me!).

“They don’t do that because they think it’s in some way worthy and virtuous or whatever, like a task.

They do it because they can’t stop.”

Which Anthony Trollope books should I start with? 

Good news: Dr Birch said he doesn’t really have any “dud” books.

“In naming the best Trollope novels, everyone gives you a different title,” she stated.

Still, “there’s something to be said for starting” with his best-known series, The Chronicles of Barsetshire. 

These include: 

• The Warden, 
• Barchester Towers, 
• Doctor Thorne, 
• Framley Parsonage, 
• The Small House at Allington, 
• The Last Chronicle of Barset. 

But don’t feel beholden to that order.

“You don’t have to start with The Warden, which in some ways is not characteristic of Trollope,” the expert said.

Barchester Towers may be a better bet, or The Small House at Allington.

“Doctor Thorne is a brilliant novel with a very brilliant plot, and in a way, kind of self-contained – you don’t have to have read the rest of The Barsetshire Chronicles”.

And the Palliser novels, involving: 

• Can You Forgive Her?,
• Phineas Finn,
• The Eustace Diamonds, 
• Phineas Redux, 
• The Prime Minister, and 
• The Duke’s Children 

are also “very strong”.

Once you start, Dr Birch ended, “you may find it’s not so easy to stop”.