Trollopian Form: An Introduction

Once regarded as a minor Victorian novelist, Anthony Trollope has in recent decades become a focus of significant attention. Trollope's enhanced profile in the field of Victorian studies has doubtless much to do with the interest in liberalism after more than twenty years of neo‐liberal economic and cultural ascendancy. Yet while Trollope’s reputation as the novelist par excellence of Victorian liberalism is relevant to the papers collected here, their special motive is to explore his distinctiveness as a practitioner of form. This introduction provides contexts for the three papers that follow, exploring the premise that Trollope's formal innovativeness has been too long overlooked.