Anthony Trollope

I have striven so hard to be proper; but when girls read everything, why should not an old woman write anything?

- Lady Carbury, in a letter to the editor of The Morning Breakfast Table

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In his 1883 Autobiography, Anthony Trollope describes his fifth novel,
Barchester Towers (1857), as his “first real step on the road to substantial success” as a novelist (1980: ch. 6, 105). For Trollope, the novel represented such a step for one simple reason – he received for it more money than he had received for any previous manuscript. Associating, if not equating, literary with economic “success,” Trollope gives a great deal of attention throughout the Autobiography to the terms of his contracts for various works, and concludes with a table of his earnings. As a result, Trollope’s Autobiography not only contains a wealth of information about the business of Victorian novelpublishing, but also communicates much about the matter-of-fact manner in which one mid-Victorian novelist accepted both his role as a producer of goods in a competitive marketplace and the values of that marketplace. For Trollope, there seems to be no tension between literary and economic value – the “good” novel is simply the novel that yields the most in the marketplace, the “successful” author he or she who most effectively exploits the market. Though the Autobiography is in many ways a unique document, the vision of literature and authorship it sets forth was arguably the dominant one throughout much of the Victorian period. Proudly declaring himself a “prose labourer,” for example, a character in Thackeray’s Pendennis (1848–50) echoes Trollope when he insists, “capital is . . . the bargain-master. It has a right to deal with the literary inventor as with any other” (1986: ch. 32: 355). Such a vision did much to shape the practices of producers, distributors, and consumers of fiction in the Victorian period, as well as the form and content of the novel.

As Trollope recognized, however, this picture of the “prose labourer” and his publisher as professionals whose success depended upon “industry,” “perseverance,” and a keen business sense would have been anathema to both earlier and later generations. On the one hand, while the tremendous popularity and profitability of Scott’s “Waverley” novels did much to inspire and shape the efforts of Victorian novelists and publishers, Scott saw himself as a professional only because he was a lawyer, referred to publishers as mere “retailers,” and refused to acknowledge for most of his life that he wrote novels; instead, he bankrupted himself in the effort to use the funds raised through his (secretive) labors as a novelist to become a landed gentleman. On the other hand, the generation of writers coming of age at the time Trollope’s Autobiography was published were no less horrified than Scott likely would have been by the vulgarly commercial attitudes it reflected. In Thackeray’s Pendennis it is the heroic George Warrington who describes himself as a humble “prose labourer,” and it is setting out to “earn [his] bread” “with [his] pen” that helps to turn Pendennis himself from “worthless idler and spendthrift” to hero (1986: ch. 32, 357). In George Gissing’s New Grub Street (1881), however, it is the unheroic Jasper Milvain who declares, “Literature nowadays is a trade . . . your successful man of letters is your skilful tradesman” who “thinks first and foremost of the markets” (1998: ch. 1, 8–9). As this suggests, any account of Victorian publishing must distinguish between the 1830s through the 1870s – the era of Trollope, Thackeray, Charles Dickens, and George Eliot – and the 1880s and 1890s – the age of Gissing, George Moore, Walter Besant, and Marie Corelli.

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Only 100 years ago, the first literary agent, JB Pinker, who represented Wilde, Conrad, Wells and James, was regarded by London's publishers with fear and suspicion. What right, they asked, had this impostor to interfere with the sacred author-publisher relationship? How dare Mr Pinker presume to negotiate terms on behalf of 'their' authors?

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The authors of Antiquity had no rights concerning their published
works; there were neither authors' nor publishing rights. Anyone could
have a text recopied, and even alter its contents. Editors earned
money and authors earned mostly glory; a book made its author
immortal. This followed the traditional conception of the culture: an
author stuck to several models, which he imitated and attempted to
improve. The status of the author was not regarded as absolutely
personal.

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Robert Darnton is Professor of History at Princeton University. He is a
prominent historian of pre-modern Europe, and a specialist in the
history of books and publishing. His lecture will explore the tale of
Mademoiselle Bonafon, a maid and writer in 18th century France
whose wildly popular fairytale and romance novels contained thinly
veiled stories about the private lives of royalty and the aristocracy.

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I asked about all the other writers working in France in the 18th
century. Who were they? How many were there? What did it mean to
be a man of letters? How did you launch a literary career? How did
you make ends meet?

...

By the 1770s and '80s these young writers found their way blocked
because the philosophes and their immediate protégés had
completely taken over the literary establishment; they held most of
the seats of the French Academy and they had a stranglehold on the
journals and the patronage system that supported writers. So a
generational tension developed in which these younger intellectuals
sought to turn certain ideas of the Enlightenment against the
establishment. This produced a large and often very angry body of
literature attacking the establishment, for instance, in terms of
equality and social privilege. I bring many of these ideas together in
The Literary Underground of the Old Regime (1982). Two points are
worth drawing out. First, I think that it was in this context--in
18th-century France, under the Enlightenment and the
Revolution--that the intellectual first emerged as a social type.
Second, in the process of this work I developed an approach to social
and intellectual history that I refer to as the "social history of ideas."
That is, the point is not simply to understand the formal arguments of
philosophers, but to see how the ideas resonated in society and how
the intellectuals themselves fit into the social order.

...

I do believe it is possible to map out the literary landscape of a
society, or the cultural landscape more broadly.

...

One of my basic convictions is that people in the past lived in a
mental world radically different from our own.

...

You have spent a great deal of time studying the history of books and
the book trade. How did you develop this interest, and why is it
important?

I came to study the history of books--which I really think is one of the
most exciting areas in the humanities today--quite by accident.

...

In 1965 I went to the library in Neuchâtel to use the archives of the
STN. When I got there I discovered that those 119 letters were
surrounded by 50,000 other letters dealing with every aspect of the
book trade--everything from orders by booksellers to the manufacture
of paper to the smuggling of books into France.

...

In 18th-century France there was a huge state censorship apparatus,
a book police, and a monopolistic booksellers' guild. All fully legal
books had to have a royal privilege, something like the king's seal of
approval. Books without a privilege or some other kind of approval
were illegal and had to be printed outside the country and smuggled
in. Almost anything that was moderately innovative, never mind
radical, was illegal. I have estimated that roughly half of what was
being read in France in the decades before the Revolution--that is,
current literature of all kinds except professional books, devotional
works, and almanacs--was printed outside the kingdom: in Brussels, in
Amsterdam, in the Rhineland, in all the cities in Switzerland. And
through these illicit channels came an interesting mix of forbidden
literature: Enlightenment philosophy, atheism, radical political writing,
and salacious fiction. The STN was one of the biggest publishing
houses in Switzerland, it dealt heavily in illegal books, and it is the
only one of these publishers for which there are surviving archives.
Thanks to the STN archive, I have been able to reconstruct in great
detail what the French were reading during the 18th century, and I
have discovered a whole substratum of very widely read illegal books
that historians knew almost nothing about.

...

Has this mapping of the literary underworld of 18th-century France led
you to think differently about the period?

...

A surprisingly large percentage of this illegal literature belonged to a
genre that the French called libelles: defamations of prominent
people. These were typically scatological biographies of famous
people, including the king. They were often racy and obscene and also
deeply political. Louis XV appears in this literature as a dirty old man;
there is nothing impressive about him except his sexual appetite.
Louis XVI has no sexual appetite at all, since he's presented as
impotent, and so Marie Antoinette appears as sexually frustrated and
promiscuous. Taken as a whole, the libelles consistently portray the
monarchy as despotic, while historians tend to see it as struggling
ineffectively to reform itself. In the period before the Revolution,
there was a running fight over fiscal policy between the crown and the
parlements; these were about a dozen judicial courts distributed
around the country. Most historians would say that the tax programs
proposed by the crown at this time were sensible and progressive,
and that those in the parlements who resisted them were merely
defending their own privileges. Yet somehow the parlements
mobilized tremendous public support at crucial moments. Why? To
put it much too simply, I think the public already had a worldview, a
schematized notion of contemporary history and politics, that
prepared them to oppose the crown, and I think this worldview was
basically derived from the forbidden literature, as well as other forms
of communication. Before the end of my career I would like to write a
history of the fall of the Old Regime and the outbreak of the
Revolution that puts the media at the center of the story. I believe
that the history of books, enlarged to include other forms of
communication, can bring us into a new understanding of a classic
historical question: Why was there a revolution in 18th-century
France?

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(excerpt)

From Chapter 5 ("Book Production: Manufacture and Bookkeeping"), part 6, of the author's Pegasus in Harness: Victorian Publishing and W. M. Thackeray, which University Press of Virginia published in 1992.

n 1857 Smith knew he was not making the money he could for himself or his author with this valuable dormant property. Bradbury and Evans was reprinting Thackeray's early magazine pieces in the Miscellanies; successful cheap editions of Vanity Fair and Pendennis were out, and The Newcomes had already proven to be a substantial money-maker. Smith was ready to work the property and took his cue from Bradbury and Evans.

The cheap edition of Esmond in one volume has 464 pages of text and 16 pages of preliminaries. It is composed of thirty octavo gatherings (eight leaves, sixteen pages per gathering). The book was printed on paper large enough to accommodate two octavo sheets (sixteen pages) at a time. It took 300 reams of long primer paper or double octavo (both terms appear in the record) to produce 10,000 copies of the book. Either of two methods of printing could have been used: work and turn with both forms of one gathering or with the inner forms of two gatherings imposed together and the outer forms together. In either case, each sheet would have been cut in two before binding. It should be noted that Smith, Elder acquired its own printing shop in 1857, having previously depended on other printers, notably Bradbury and Evans, for book production. Esmond was reprinted on Smith's own presses. Publication was announced on 17 October 1857 [Harden, Esmond, p. 87] though the ledger accounts are dated November and the book itself bears the date 1858.

It might be said that Smith overestimated the demand for a cheap edition of Esmond, since in June 1863 the firm's warehouse still held 3,320 copies out of a first printing of 10,000. Yet there was every reason to bet high on Thackeray in 1857. Although Bradbury and Evans lived to rue the euphoria of that year, claiming to have lost thousands on The Virginians, the amazing thing is that Smith did not lose a penny. In the first month and a half the company had sold 3,528 copies, enough to pay all its costs for the cheap edition of Esmond and divide £6.17 with Thackeray. In the next year author and publisher divided a profit of £88.9, and in the next they shared an even £100, after which they still had half the edition in hand. Far from [198/199] being a drug on the market, the remaining stock was like money in reserve, for the author was Thackeray and the publisher had a long-term commitment to the property. Thackeray's unexpected death sent sales soaring, and by January 1866 Smith was preparing a new edition for a new printing of 1,000 copies. By hindsight one could say that Smith did not bet high enough in 1857, for he failed to order stereotyped plates, which he could have used for the January 1866 edition and for a second printing of 1,000 more copies in September of the same year. By 1866 Smith had completed his acquisition of the Thackeray literary empire by purchasing copyrights from all other owners, so he did not have to share profits with anyone. In eighteen months, by June 1867, he had recovered costs on the 1866 edition of Esmond and made another £57.12, plus the publisher's 5 percent commission figured on total income.

The available records are incomplete, but one can estimate that the cheap edition of Esmond made between £800 and £1,200 of profit from 12,000 copies produced in three printings over an eight-year period on an investment of under £700, all of which was recovered within two months. By comparison, the profits for Bradbury and Evans's cheap edition of Vanity Fair over a thirteen-year period came to about £1,300 on 22,000 copies produced in eleven printings and a remainder in 1865 of 681 copies.

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I must look more closely at your writings, but I think your chances are excellent, if you work very hard and work consistently. You should try to read a biography of F. Scott Fitzgerald as an example of how NOT to succeed, or how to succeed in spite of yourself.

Look at the autobiography of Anthony Trollope, to see an example of how to pursue your writing career in a positive, disciplined manner

I will give you link to Trollope autobiography thread



http://www.thebookforum.com/forums/showthread.php?t=10781



There is what I have done regarding Trollope. It will be very instructive for an aspiring writer. Trollope's life of focus, compared to Fitzgerald's life of folly. Also, become very familiar with poet Wallace Stevens and read his essays "The Necessary Angel" about poetry and imagination.


I would suggest, immerse yourself in Wallace Stevens and Robert Frost. Also, take a look at Milan Kundera's essays "The Art of the Novel."


One must acquire a deep foundation, so as not to be shallow. The most creative writer will be shallow, without a foundation. You are young, in your early 20s, with much time to spare, give it a chance. Give these readings a year's worth of effort before you abandon the endeavor. If you seek literary greatness, avoid early marriage and family, just a suggestion. You may marry in your 40s and still not miss so much. Then you will have your best years to concentrate on your craft. Often, marriage is a bitter experience, not always, but more often, and a great drain upon your creative energies. If you redirect your libido energy to writing, you may achieve greatness. Also, avoid alcohol like the plague. Alcohol ruined so many: Hemingway, Fitzgerald, O'Henry.

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Roger53 said:

I am thoroughly enjoying The Way we Live Now. I have struggled with some of his other stuff, but this one is very good. The TV series with the nasty Melmotte played by David Suchet, was also excellent.

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