An Autobiography

A worker bee, Anthony Trollope managed to produce a startling amount of writing without quitting his rather demanding day job until he was in his early fifties and without sacrificing his modest sporting pleasures. He always backed the tortoise, but the beauty of his version: "A small daily task, if it really be daily, will beat the labors of a spasmodic Hercules," illustrates why we read Trollope with pleasure today. It really was daily with him, rising at 5:30 and writing until 8:00: producing 250 words per fifteen-minute interval until the requisite pages were complete. Each word counted in the process, all the while working toward an allotment for that "work of art" like a baker filling a cake mold. It's easy to see how this view behind the curtain, which disclaims and almost belittles not only genius, but even mere inspiration, hurt his readership upon posthumous publication. Additionally the reader gains Trollope's top ten of contemporary writers: Thackeray edges out Eliot and Dickens, but we don't for a minute doubt he places himself higher. He doesn't care much about plot, but emphasizes character and what, if Trollope could hire Budweiser's PR people, would be readability. So does Mr. Trollope make an interesting character and how does An Autobiography stack up on the readability scale? Off the charts. It's pleasant to spend the time with Mr. Trollope, even if he is a bit of a stick in the mud, and marvel that The Way We Live Now, Phinneas Finn, and The Eustace Diamonds were produced by a man claiming so little talent. It's a marvelous book and should inspire anyone to forsake TV and other time wasters. Read his best novels first then by all means read this. [288 words, 18 minutes]

Anthony Trollope was arguably the most readable of the Victorians. Just as his novels have held up, so does his autobiography in which he reveals a refreshing look at the literature of his times. He was a down-to-earth guy, expressing common sense about the craft of writing and the writing life. I highly recommend it for any reader or writer.

Redolent of the Victorian Age, and beautifully written. Some of the amusement comes precisely from his occasional pedantic preaching of Victorian virtues. He is capable of being self-critical. If elsewhere he is self-satisfied, he has much to be self-satisfied about. A man who from the most unpromising beginning came to live life to the full.

If one has read a number of Trollope's novels, one would expect that Trollope would have written precisely this sort of autobiography. In fact, it is almost impossible to imagine it having taken any other form.Trollope writes not so much of his life (though he does touch upon the major events), as of his occupation. Although employed most of his adult life by the postal service, Trollope decided to engage in a second and parallel career as a writer. He is forthright about his motives: the satisfaction of writing, but also fame, financial reward, and social standing. Looking back on his career, Trollope is proud of a job well done. The oddity is that he seems quite as happy telling us about how much he sold each work for, and the financial dealings with his publishers, as he does about his books and characters. In fact, near the end of the book he gives a complete list of his novels and how much he managed to sell each one for (with very few exceptions, he preferred to sell the rights to a novel, rather than getting a percentage of sales). What emerges is a portrait of the novelist not as an artist so much as a dedicated, disciplined craftsman. He explicitly denigrates the value of genius and creativity in a novelist in favor of hard work and keeping to a schedule of writing.The early sections of the book dealing with his childhood are fascinating. By all measures, Trollope had a bad childhood. His discussions of his father are full of pathos and sadness. What is especially shocking is the lack of credit he gives to his mother, who, in early middle age, realizing that her husband was a perpetual financial failure, decided to salvage the family's fortunes by becoming a novelist. He notes that while nursing several children dying from consumption, she wrote a huge succession of books, enabling the family to live a greatly improved mode of existence. Her achievement must strike an outside observer as an incredibly heroic undertaking. Trollope seems scarcely impressed.Some of the more interesting parts of the book are his evaluation of the work of many of his contemporaries. History has not agreed completely with all of his assessments. For instance, he rates Thackery as the greatest novelist of his generation, and HENRY ESMOND as the greatest novel in the language. HENRY ESMOND is still somewhat read, but it hardly receives the kind of regard that Trollope heaped on it, and it is certainly not as highly regarded as VANITY FAIR. Trollope's remarks on George Eliot are, however, far closer to general opinion. His remarks concerning Dickens, are, however, bizarre. It is obvious that Trollope really dislikes him, even while grudgingly offering some compliments. Quite perceptively, Trollope remarks that Dickens's famous characters are not lifelike or human (anticipating E. M. Forster's assessment that Dickens's characters are "flat" rather than "round" like those of Tolstoy or Austen) and that Dickens's famous pathos is artificial and inhuman (anticipating

you should consider reading this too! Trollope writes candidly about his education (and about being a poor, mostly overlooked student), his lack of professional ambition (and how he finally got around to witing his first novel),and the ups and downs of his literary career (and his early rejections). He does all of this in the same conversational tone employed in his novels, making this autobiography feel more like a chat with an older, experienced friend than a learned, classic autobiography