Trollope as a Short Story Writer

Abstract

A NTHONY TROLLOPE'S stories constitute a substantial and substantially ignored portion of his prodigious output. He began writing them after having established, in his mid-forties, a reputation as author of the first three Barsetshire novels; and with the great success of Framley Parsonage in 1860, editors of Victorian middlebrow magazines began to importune him for short works bearing his name. To his young American friend, Kate Field, who had sent him one of her short stories for criticism, Trollope offered a formula for storytelling which demonstrates how modestly he may have regarded his own practice, at least in the beginning stages: Tell some simple plot or story of more or less involved, but still common life, adventure, and try first to tell that in such form that idle minds may find some gentle sentiment and recreation in your work.' Such a goal indicates why so many of his stories, virtually all of them pleasant enough to read through, are not comparable to the more ambitious, more painstakingly constructed, efforts of James and Kipling, Lawrence and Joyce. Like Mrs. Gaskell and Dickens, Trollope was perfectly willing to produce slight works of an anecdotal or inspirational nature. Like them, however, he was also capable of works of great power or delicacy. Malachi's Cove and The Spotted Dog are masterpieces of the Victorian short story form; and even when Trollope is not at his best, he does provide us with aspects of his art and personality-in the forms of a humorous self-portrait, or a somber display of his view of human nature, or a rare glimpse of his creative process at work-that are usually missing from the novels themselves.