Anthony Trollope

Phineas Finn Anthony Trollope

The novel is set against the background of the Reform Bill of 1867, and focuses on an Irish Member of the British House of Commons; in it Trollope explores the relations between the distinct elements of 'the United Kingdom'. Phineas has a personal chronicle which largely dominates the political calendar and it is noteworthy that Trollope wrote Phineas Finn at the same time as Gladstone's accession to power and the momentous consequences for Ireland that followed. Phineas Finn is the second of the Palliser novels. As a group they provide us with the most extensive and telling expos of British life during the period of its greatest prestige. Anthony Trollope was one of the most successful, prolific and respected English novelists of the Victorian era. Some of his best-loved works, collectively known as the Chronicles of Barsetshire, revolve around the imaginary county of Barsetshire. He also wrote perceptive novels on political, social, and gender issues, and on other topical matters. Noted fans have included Sir Alec Guinness (who never travelled without a Trollope novel), former British Prime Ministers Harold Macmillan and Sir John Major, economist John Kenneth Galbraith, English judge Lord Denning, American novelists Sue Grafton and Dominick Dunne, poet Edward Fitzgerald, artist Edward Gorey, who kept a complete set of his books, American author Robert Caro and soap opera writer Harding Lemay. Trollope's literary reputation dipped somewhat during the last years of his life, but he had regained the esteem of critics by the mid-twentieth century.