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About Trollope:

Anthony Trollope’s father, Thomas Anthony Trollope,

worked as a barrister. Thomas Trollope, though a clever and

well-educated man and a Fellow of New College, Oxford,

failed at the bar due to his bad temper. In addition, his ventures

into farming proved unprofitable and he lost an expected

inheritance when an elderly uncle married and had children.

Nonetheless, he came from a genteel background, with

connections to the landed gentry, and so wished to educate his

sons as gentlemen and for them to attend Oxford or

Cambridge. The disparity between his family’s social

background and its poverty would be the cause of much

misery to Anthony Trollope during his boyhood. Born in

London, Anthony attended Harrow School as a day-boy for

three years from the age of seven, as his father’s farm lay in

that neighbourhood. After a spell at a private school, he

followed his father and two older brothers to Winchester

College, where he remained for three years. He returned to

Harrow as a day-boy to reduce the cost of his education.

Trollope had some very miserable experiences at these two

public schools. They ranked as two of the most élite schools in

England, but Trollope had no money and no friends, and got

bullied a great deal. At the age of twelve, he fantasized about

suicide. However, he also daydreamed, constructing elaborate

imaginary worlds. In 1827, his mother Frances Trollope

moved to America with Trollope’s three younger siblings,

where she opened a bazaar in Cincinnati, which proved

unsuccessful. Thomas Trollope joined them for a short time

before returning to the farm at Harrow, but Anthony stayed in

England throughout. His mother returned in 1831 and rapidly

made a name for herself as a writer, soon earning a good

income. His father’s affairs, however, went from bad to worse.

He gave up his legal practice entirely and failed to make

enough income from farming to pay rents to his landlord Lord

Northwick. In 1834 he fled to Belgium to avoid arrest for debt.

The whole family moved to a house near Bruges, where they

lived entirely on Frances’s earnings. In 1835, Thomas Trollope

died. While living in Belgium, Anthony worked as a Classics

usher (a junior or assistant teacher) in a school with a view to

learning French and German, so that he could take up a

promised commission in an Austrian cavalry regiment, which

had to be cut short at six weeks. He then obtained a position as

a civil servant in the British Post Office through one of his

mother’s family connections, and returned to London on his

own. This provided a respectable, gentlemanly occupation, but

not a well-paid one.

 

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