Anthony Trollope's Late Style

Edinburgh Critical Studies in Victorian Culture Series editor: Julian Wolfreys Drawing on provocative research, volumes in the series provide timely revisions of the nineteenth-century’s literature and culture Anthony Trollope’s Late Style Frederik Van Dam ‘Frederik Van Dam’s Anthony Trollope’s Late Style establishes its author as a brilliant leading expert globally on Anthony Trollope. It is far more than just an analysis of Trollope’s late style and presents wonderfully detailed readings of the author’s late works (1875 and onwards). It is a superb book in every way.’ J. Hillis Miller, UCI Distinguished Research Professor, University of California at Irvine Explores the relation between Anthony Trollope’s stylistic innovations and Victorian liberalism Henry James famously dismissed Anthony Trollope’s ultimate compositions for their ‘fatal dryness of texture’ and ‘mechanical movement’. Taking its cue from James’s observations while challenging his assessment, this study suggests that the peculiar aesthetic of Trollope’s late novels was born out of his growing doubt about the viability of liberalism in a world increasingly marked by global capitalism. Anthony Trollope’s Late Style shows how in his late novels Trollope experiments with a multitude of literary conventions in order to articulate a form of subjectivity in which the individual element has been erased. Key Features • Examines the writings from the last decade of Trollope’s life that have received only scant critical attention, including his novellas and The Life of Cicero • Presents a panorama of Victorian intellectual debates on topics such as colonialism, marginalist economics, nationalism, the classics, pedagogy, legal reform, and urban sociability • Pays attention to the style of a major Victorian novelist often regarded as formally uninteresting • Reveals the radical politics behind Anthony Trollope’s artistic praxis Frederik Van Dam is a postdoctoral research fellow in English literature at the University of Leuven (KU Leuven) and the Flemish Research Foundation (FWO). He has written widely on the relationship between literature and intellectual discourse in the nineteenth century. His current research focuses on the impact of British diplomacy on the rhetoric of nineteenth-century cosmopolitanism, with particular attention to English and Irish views on the Risorgimento.