Trollope’s Traveler, Colonialist, Writing and Rural Tales: For Summer

Veronica Quilligan as Mally on cliff, Mally gathering seaweed, from 1970s Malachi’s Cove (Henry Herbert, BBC)

A Syllabus

For a course at the Oscher LifeLong Learning Institute at American University
Day: Four Wednesdays,
June 6 to 27
4400 Massachusetts Ave, NW. Washington DC

Dr Ellen Moody

Description of Course

It’s not well enough known that beyond the familiar Barsetshire and Palliser and other Anglo- novels centered in the upper classes, Anthony Trollope wrote fascinating short fiction based on his extensive experience as a traveler about the globe, serious interest in settler colonialism, work as an editor and writer, love of the countryside, and ways people make a living. As he spent less time on these, he was freer to break conventions and reader expectations, to write downright tragic stories, explore unusual and iconoclastic topics, to indulge in his taste for subversive and salacious ironies, and to be more openly autobiographical. We will read two to three of his tales each week for four weeks. You will meet an unofficial and unmasked Trollope perhaps unknown to you.

The Female Emigrant: a 19th century illustration

Format: The class will be a mix of informal lecture and group discussion.

Required Texts (in the order we’ll read them): The term’s schedule or calendar:

As these are not mainstream publications, while they exist in excellent anthologies (see below), the easiest way to access and read them is online.

First most of Trollope’s works are online at https://ebooks.adelaide.edu.au/t/trollope/anthony/index.html

I list the selected short stories in the order we will read them with a link to the best text (most of the time at the University of Adelaide, Australia). Where there is another good text, I cite that. Numbers are Gutenberg texts too. Click on the title or the URLs below for those I’ve linked in:

Read for June 6: First set: Traveler, Colonialist
Returning Home

https://ebooks.adelaide.edu.au/t/trollope/anthony/tales/chapter14.html

Aaron Trowe

https://ebooks.adelaide.edu.au/t/trollope/anthony/tales/chapter9.html

Journey to Panama

https://ebooks.adelaide.edu.au/t/trollope/anthony/lotta-schmidt/chapter9.html

Read for June 13: Second set: Editor’s, Employment, Writing, A Magazine
The Spotted Dog

http://archive.org/stream/aneditorstale00troluoft#page/228/mode/2up
http://archive.org/stream/aneditorstale00troluoft#page/n5/mode/2up/search/spotted+dog

The Panjandrum

http://archive.org/stream/aneditorstale00troluoft#page/142/mode/2up
http://archive.org/stream/aneditorstale00troluoft#page/n5/mode/2up/search/Panjandrum

Vine Maple Studio:
http://vinemaple.net/studio/anthony-trollope/panjandrum-1/
http://vinemaple.net/studio/anthony-trollope/panjandrum-2/

“The Spotted Dog” and “The Panjandrum” are also available at Librivox read aloud:

https://archive.org/details/editorstales_1403_librivox

Read for June 20: Third set: Making a Living, a Christmas story
Malachi’s Cove

https://ebooks.adelaide.edu.au/t/trollope/anthony/lotta-schmidt/chapter5.html

The Widow’s Mite

https://ebooks.adelaide.edu.au/t/trollope/anthony/lotta-schmidt/chapter6.html

Why Frau Frohmann Raised her Prices

https://www.gutenberg.org/files/55212/55212-h/55212-h.htm

Read for June 27: Fourth set: Traditional, Transgressive, Tragic
The Parson’s Daughter of Oxney Colne

https://ebooks.adelaide.edu.au/t/trollope/anthony/tales/chapter11.html

A Ride Across Palestine

https://ebooks.adelaide.edu.au/t/trollope/anthony/tales/chapter15.html

La Mere Bauche

https://ebooks.adelaide.edu.au/t/trollope/anthony/tales/chapter1.html

If you would like to purchase them, they are available in these editions as used books on many sites: Recommended: AT: Early Short Stories; AT: Later Short Stories, ed John Sutherland. 19994,1995 Oxford University Press, 2 volumes 0192829874; 0192829882. A single fat volume with good concise notes is by Julian Thompson: AT: The Complete Shorter Fiction. NY: Carroll & Graf, 1992. ISBN 0786700211. The Trollope Society has also published them all in a six volume set; since these come without notes, you are much better off reading the stories online at the University of Adelaide. Amazon offers an enormous kindle text said to contain all Trollope’s fiction.

John Millais, “Christmas Story-Telling,” “Christmas Supplement,” London News, 20 December 1862

Brief bibliography:

Cooksay, Thomas L., “Trollope and the Mysterious Orient: The Romanticism of Disillusionment in Tales of All Countries,” International Perspectives in English and American Language and literature (1999): 20-40.
Glendinning, Victoria. Anthony Trollope. NY: Knopf, 1993.
Kohn, Denise. “‘The Journey to Panama’: One of Trollope’s Best ‘Tarts’ – or, Why You Should Read ‘The Journey to Panama’ to Develop Your Taste for Trollope,” Studies in Short Fiction, 30:1 (Winter 1993):15-22
Niles, Lisa. “Trollope’s Short Fiction,” The Cambridge Companion to Anthony Trollope, edd. Carolyn Dever and Lisa Niles. Cambridge UP, 2011.
Snow, C. P. Trollope: An Illustrated Biography. NY: New Amsterdam, 1975.
Stone, Donald. “Trollope as a Short Story Writer,” Nineteenth Century Fiction, 31 (1976):26-47.
Wagner, Tamara, ed. Victorian Settler Narratives. London: Pickering & Chatto, 2014.

Gustave Dore, “Third Class Passengers at a Station,” London: A Pilgrimage, 1872.