Trollope the Realist

Abstract

Trollope’s reputation has suffered so much from the results of his own senile fatuity that it is now almost impossible to define his proper place in English fiction with reasonable accuracy. He left behind him a posthumous autobiography in which he described his method of work and attempted to decry the element of inspiration in literature. Although he merely showed that he was incapable of recognizing it in himself, he has been taken at his word. His reputation collapsed and has never been restored. When his admirers praise the ‘honesty’ of the Autobiography, they do him little service; there is a difference between honesty and uncouthness, and as far as the business of literature is concerned, one paragraph of Flaubert’s letters is worth everything that Trollope wrote.

From The Mirror in the Roadway: A Study of the Modern Novel (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1956), pp. 165–83. Reprinted by permission of Alfred A. Knopf. Inc.