An Autobiography

Trollope was born in 1815, the son of a formidable mother and a tragically unsuccessful father. Poor, ill-dressed, awkward, and sullen, he was the victim of vicious bullying at Harrow and Winchester. But he managed later to carve out a successful career in the General Post Office while devoting every spare moment (except in hunting season) to writing. How he paid his groom to wake him every morning at 5.30 a.m. and disciplined himself to write 250 words every quarterof an hour has...
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Trollope was born in 1815, the son of a formidable mother and a tragically unsuccessful father. Poor, ill-dressed, awkward, and sullen, he was the victim of vicious bullying at Harrow and Winchester. But he managed later to carve out a successful career in the General Post Office while devoting every spare moment (except in hunting season) to writing. How he paid his groom to wake him every morning at 5.30 a.m. and disciplined himself to write 250 words every quarterof an hour has become part of literary legend. His efforts resulted in over sixty books, fortune, and fame, and in An Autobiography Trollope looks back on his life with some satisfaction. The facts he reveals and the opinions he records - about Dickens and George Eliot, politics and the civilservice - are as revealing as the judgements he passes on his own character.