Happy Birthday, Anthony!

Today in 1815 Anthony Trollope was born. Inventor of the mail box and author of forty-seven novels as well as short stories and articles, Trollope was one of the most prolific and best-loved of the Victorian novelists. Unlike, say, Dickens, Trollope's novels were always set now, not thirty years earlier, and so he is useful as a gauge of morals and vocabulary as well as hugely entertaining. The Chronicles of Barchester and the Palliser novels, two six-volume lightly entertwined series of novels (by which I mean that the two series overlap slightly - they are genuine series) are his best known; The Way We Live Now or perhaps He Knew He Was Right is his masterwork. I myself am quite fond of Barchester - and the Angela Thirkell 20th century Barchester novels, too! - and also of The American Senator and Dr Whortle's School.