Novelist Anthony Trollope was born in London, England on April 24, 1815. He attended many famous schools but as a large, awkward boy, he never felt in place among the aristocrats he met there. In 1834, he became a junior clerk in the General Post Office, London. He spent seven years there in poverty until his transfer, in 1841, to Banagher, Ireland as a deputy postal surveyor. He became more financially secure and in 1844, he married Rose Heseltine. He wanted to discover the reasons for Irish discontent. In 1843, he began working on his first novel The Macdermots of Ballycloran which was published in 1847. He was sent on many postal missions. He spent a year is Belfast, in 1853, then went… to Donnybrook, near Dublin. He also went to Egypt, Scotland and the West Indies to finally settle outside of London, at Waltham Cross, as a surveyor general in the Post Office. At this point, he was writing constantly. Some of the writings during this time were The Noble Jilt, Barchester Towers, and The Last Chronicle of Barset. In 1867, he tried editorship of St. Paul's Magazine but soon gave up because he didn't feel suited for the job. In 1871, he went on a visit to a son in Australia. At sea, he wrote Lady Anna on the voyage out and Australia and New Zealand on the voyage back. The Autobiography was written between October 1875 and April 1876 but was not published until after his death. Suffering from asthma and possible angina pectoris, he moved to Harting Grange. He wrote three more novels during 1881 than, in 1882, went to Ireland to begin research for The Landleaguers. In November that year, he suffered a paralytic stroke and he died on December 6, 1882.
N. John Hall is Distinguished Professor of English, Bronx Community College and the Graduate School, City University of New York.