The Cambridge Companion to Anthony Trollope

by Carolyn Dever (Editor), Lisa Niles (Editor)

Anthony Trollope was among the most prolific, popular, and richly diverse writers of the mid-Victorian period, with forty-seven novels and a variety of other writings to his name. Both a serial and series writer whose novels traversed Ireland, England, Australia and New Zealand, and genres from realism to science fiction, Trollope also published criticism, short fiction, travel writing and biography. The Cambridge Companion to Anthony Trollope provides a state-of-the-field review of critical perspectives on his work, with the volume's sixteen essays addressing Trollope's biography, autobiography, canonical fiction, short stories and travel writing, as well as surveying diverse topics including gender, sexuality, vulgarity, and the law.

Genres: Literary Criticism

256 pages, Paperback

First published December 23, 2010

Reviews

[Ginny · Rating 4 out of 5]

Of course this is a book it would be fun to have as a reference, but the cost is prohibitive. I am not an academic, and some of the essays probably went over my head. I have decided, after having tried a couple of things by her, that Jenny Bourne Taylor doesn't speak to me . I was intrigued by Kate Flint in her essay "Queer Trollope", Laurie Langbauer explaining the concept of the "Hobbledehoy" (I think this essay was recommended and the reason I checked out this book), and especially Ayelet Ben-Yishai with an exciting take on an old topic, "Trollope and the law." I really enjoyed exploring this book. I am not a serious follower of criticism, but as I have read essentially all the works they refer to, I was able to get most of it, and gained some new understandings and perspectives.

[Thomas · Rating 4 out of 5]

Dever, Carolyn, and Lisa Niles, eds. The Cambridge Companion to Anthony Trollope. Cambridge Companions to Literature. Cambridge UP, 2010.
The Cambridge Companion is not the place to go if you need guides to individual novels, but it does do a good job of putting Trollope’s work in a wide context. It covers issues of race, gender, politics and religion in Trollope’s novels, and it highlights his ability as a travel writer. Most useful for me were the various discussions of Trollope as an innovator as a professional writer. He innovated the novel series, showed sensationalism was not the only route to popular success, and that writing could be treated as a profession in which hard work was more important than messages from the muse. These essays helped me appreciate the straightforward lucidity of Trollope’s mind and style.

[Tom Calvard · Rating 4 out of 5]

Solid Trollope scholarship across a series of well-edited chapters. Unless you're a fan of Trollope's novels, though, it's not going to be of much interest, unsurprisingly.