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FOCUS ON: Trollope, Anthony
Anthony Trollope, novelist, was the fourth son of Thomas Anthony Trollope, a barrister, and Frances (Milton) Trollope. Born at 6 Keppel Street, Bloomsbury, London, the infant was taken at the age of one year, to a house called Julians, near Harrow. The father was gloomy, ill-tempered, and improvident: his law practice gradually fell away; an expected inheritance was cut off; and the family fortunes sank lower and lower each year. In 1822 Anthony became a day-boy at Harrow School; in 1825 he was transferred to Arthur Drury's private school at Sunbury; and in 1827 he went to his father's old school, Winchester. Finally, in the spring of 1830, he went back to Harrow. Attempts at University scholarships were abortive. He was a large, awkward, uncouth boy, ill-clad and often dirty, and felt an unhappy outcast among the young aristocrats and plutocrats he met at these famous schools. At the end of 1827 his mother had gone to America with the bluestocking Frances Wright and the French painter Auguste Hervieu. Among the wildcat projects afoot at this time was the setting up of a bazaar in Cincinnati for the sale of English goods. The bazaar (a horrible architectural monstrosity) was actually built, but the enterprise failed dismally and precipitated the final ruin of the family. Sold up in April 1834, the Trollopes went to Bruges, and were now supported by the novel-writing of Frances, who had commenced authorship in 1832, with Domestic Manners of the Americans. Thomas Anthony Trollope died at the end of 1835.
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Trollope, Anthony
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