Anthony Trollope and his Contemporaries: A Study in the Theory and Conventions of Mid-Victorian Fiction

192 Pages·1996·21.18 MB·English

by  David Skilton (auth.)

ANTHONY TROLLOPE
AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES
Also by David Skilton
DEFOE TO THE VICTORIANS: Two Centuries
of the English Novel
THE EARLY AND MID-VICTORIAN NOVEL
Anthony Trollope
and his Contemporaries
A Study in the Theory and Conventions of
Mid-Victorian Fiction
David Skilton
Published in Great Britain by
MACMILLAN PRESS LTD
Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 6XS
and London
Companies and representatives
throughout the world
First edition (Longman) 1972
Reissued with alterations (Macmillan) 1996
A catalogue record for this book is available
from the British Library.
ISBN 978-0-333-62887-4 ISBN 978-1-349-24693-9 (eBook)
DOI 10.1007/978-1-349-24693-9
First published in the United States of America 1996 by
ST. MARTIN'S PRESS, INC.,
Scholarly and Reference Division,
175 Fifth Avenue,
New York, N.Y. 10010
ISBN 978-0-312-15879-8
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Skilton, David.
Anthony Trollope and his contemporaries : a study in the theory
and conventions of mid-Victorian fiction I David Skilton
p. em.
Originally published: London : Longman, 1972.
Includes bibliographical references (p. ) and index.
ISBN 978-0-312-15879-8
I. Trollope, Anthony, 1815-1882-Aesthetics. 2. English
fiction-19th century-History and criticism-Theory, etc.
3. Trollope, Anthony, 1815-1882-Contemporaries. 4. Great Britain
-History-Victoria, 1837-1901. 5. Aesthetics, British--19th
century. I. Title.
PR5687.S5 1996
823' .8-dc20 96-7527
CIP
© David Skilton 1972, 1996
All rights reserved. No reproduction, copy or transmission of
this publication may be made without written permission.
No paragraph of this publication may be reproduced, copied or transmitted
save with written permission or in accordance with the provisions of the
Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, or under the terms of any licence
permitting limited copying issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency, 90
Tottenham Court Road, London W 1P 9HE.
Any person who does any unauthorised act in relation to this publication
may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 I
05 04 03 02 01 00 99 98 97 96
CONTENTS
Acknowledgements vii
Notes on References viii
Preface to the 1996 Reprint ix
Introduction xvii
Chapter One THE ESTABLISHMENT OF
TROLLOPE'S REPUTATION I
The earliest novels I
Trollope discovered 5
The despot of the lending-libraries 17
The slow decline 30
Chapter Two CRITICAL CONCERNS OF THE
'SIXTIES: TRAGEDY
AND IMAGINATION 37
Omnes omnia bona dicere 37
The borders of tragedy 40
Lack of imagination 45
The Saturday Revsew and mechanical
art 53
Chapter Three THE MORALITY OF FICTION
sB
AND THE DEPICTION OF VICE
ss
Charges of moral irresponsibility
The depiction of vice 61
Moral proportion 6s
The Eustace Diamonds 70
Grandeur and idealization 73
vi CONTENTS
Chapter Four MORAL AND
SOCIAL ACCEPT ABILITY 79
The critical tight-rope 79
The apotheosis of Colonel Newcome Bs
Principal and secondary characters 88
A conventional ending 94
Chapter Five RICHARD HOLT HUTTON
AND TROLLOPE'S
CHARACTERIZATION 100
Superficiality and depth 103
Trollope as society-novelist: imagina-
tion versus observation 109
Social strategy and the language of
manners II3
The individual and society II6
Masculine and feminine characteriza-
tion II8
The imitation of character 122
Chapter Six TROLLOPE'S THEORY
AND PRACTICE
126
OF NOVEL-WRITING
The Autobiography 128
Trollope on the creative process 131
Conception 131
The inner world 133
The 'telling' of the tale 134
Trollopian realism 137
Appendix I NOTES ON SOME USES OF
THE WORD 'REALISM' IN
MID-VICTORIAN CRITICISM
OF THE NOVEL 149
Appendix II BIBLIOGRAPHY OF
CONTEMPORARY BRITISH
ARTICLES ON TROLLOPE 153
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
I am grateful to the present editor and librarian of the Spectator for
access to their editorial records; the editor and proprietors of the New
Statesman for permission to consult the marked file of the Athenaeum
in their possession; and Mr J. Gordon Phillips, Archivist of The Times,
for his kind work on my behalf in finding the authorship of numerous
articles in that newspaper from its Editorial Diaries.
I also wish to thank Dr Tony Tanner, Mr Hugh Sykes Davies and
Dr Raymond Williams for their advice and encouragement at various
stages in the preparation of this work.
D. J. S.
1972
NOTES ON REFERENCES
Abbreviations
Autobiography Anthony Trollope, An Autobiography, ed. F.
Page, Oxford University Press, I950
Letters The Letters of Anthony Trollope, ed. B. A.
Booth, Oxford University Press, I95I
Bibliography M. Sadleir, Trollope: a Bibliography, Dawsons
of Pall Mall, I928; repr. Ig64
Commentary M. Sadleir, Trollope: a Commentary, 3rd edn,
Oxford University Press, I945; repr. Ig6I
Critical Heritage Trollope: the Critical Heritage, ed. D. Smalley,
Routledge, Ig6g
The Palliser novels are quoted in the Oxford Trollope edition, ed.
M. Sadleir and F. Page, I948-54; other novels in the World's Classics
series where available. All references to Trollope's novels are also
given by chapters, numbered cumulatively, regardless of volume
divisions, so that (for example) chapter I of volume 2 is called chapter
19, where volume I has I8 chapters.
In chapters I and 2 of this work, where chronology is important,
each review quoted is detailed by date, volume and page numbers
on each appearance. In chapters 3 to 6, each review is only cited in
full on its first appearance in each chapter.
PREFACE TO THE
1996 REPRINT
When I started this book in the mid-1960s, I intended to address two
problems. The first was that Anthony Trollope was ill served in
terms of the amount of critical writing devoted to his work, and even
worse served by its quality. Indeed prospects were not good for
Trollope studies at the time, when few novels as widely read as his
(by the general public, at least) were so little understood. Literary
criticism was limited to A. 0. J. Cockshut'sAnthony Trollope (1955)
and Bradford A. Booth's Trollope: Aspects of His life and Work
(1959), while for biography we had to rely on T.H.S. Escott's book
from 1913 and Michael Sadleir's influential but dated Trollope: A
Commentary from 1928, supplemented by The Trollopes: The
Chronicle of A Writing Family of 1948 by L.P. and R.P. Stebbins.
Sadleir's Trollope: A Bibliography (1928) was, of course, a model of
description and an incomparable tool for the collector, but the
Oxford Trollope, which was launched in 1948 as a serious attempt to
bring the novels before the public in reasonable editions, had only
published seven novels and An Autobiography when it ran out of
steam in 1954. In fact, of the fourteen volumes which constituted
these eight titles, only An Autobiography was provided with editorial
apparatus to a standard to satisfy a scholar. In contrast, the
Clarendon Dickens, which started publication in 1966, was
promising vastly improved material for the serious study of one of
Trollope's great contemporaries.
A striking feature of much of the critical discussion of Trollope's
works was the extent to which it centred on his success or otherwise
in meeting the criteria accepted by Henry James and his followers as
to what constituted a novel, without there being any historical sense
that mid-Victorian fiction might be excellent in its own terms.
Indeed there was a lack of perception of what these terms might be.