Trollope

An Autobiography

By: Anthony Trollope

Narrated by: Bernard Mayes

Anthony Trollope is most famous for his portrait of the professional and landed classes of Victorian England, especially in his Palliser and Barsetshire novels. But he was also the author of one of the most fascinating autobiographies of the nineteenth century.
Trollope was born in 1815, the product of a formidable mother and a tragically unsuccessful father who was socially ambitious for his sons. He was the victim of vicious bullying at Harrow and Winchester. But he had inherited his mother's determination, and managed later to carve out a successful career in the General Post Office while devoting every spare moment to writing. How he paid his groom to wake him every morning at 5:30 a.m. and disciplined himself to write 250 words every fifteen minutes has become part of literary legend. His efforts resulted in over sixty books, a sizable fortune, and fame, and his autobiography. Trollope looks back on his life with satisfaction. Perhaps as interesting as the facts he reveals and the opinions he records about Dickens and George Eliot, politics and the civil service are the judgments he passes on his own character.(P)1997 by Blackstone Audiobooks

Interesting beginning

This starts off well but soon he gets very pedantic, lists of dates and books and amount paid etc.
The parts about working for Her Majesty's postal service are pretty good.
The reader is appropriately even and pompous but the quality of the recording is terrible. It sounds like it was made in an echo chamber.
I love a lot of his novels but not this.

the meaning of work

Trollope gives direct instruction on virtuous work. In his case, he followed his bliss of novel writing while working for a steady income in government service innovating efficient mail delivery guidelines for Ireland. I am changed by Trollope's moral strength. For him, all action follows from character. The narrator is a 19th century elderly voice. The narrator was brilliant.

definately for the Trollope officianado

Trollope is a fovorite author, so I enjoyed the added depth this book provided. It is very idiosyncratic, and Trollope obviously vented as he was not writing for his own contemporary reading public. The long list of his life's earnings from his novels, I found peculiar and petty, but then, I wonder if Trollope imagined readers decades after his death, plodding through it, and had a last laugh. The reader was perfect-I thought I was listening to Trollope himself.

Superb Author Autobiography

Anthony Trollope's Autobiography stands out a fascinating look at the life of an outstanding 19th Century novelist. Highly recommended for insights into Trollope's life and his approach to his writing.

Funny and trenchant, Trollope will convince you of the opposite of what you think now.

Opposing competitive examinations, extolling fox-hunting, Trollope is woke-not -- and DEI in reverse-- but funny and humane. A model of candid autobiography.