When, in 1873, Trollope had taken the Montagu Square house, it was for the purpose of ending both his days and his work there and there only. The fates, however, had decided against that. In the late autumn of 1882 Trollope reappeared in London, but took up his abode at Garland’s Hotel, Suffolk Street, Pall Mall. On the 3rd of November, while dining at the house of his brother-in-law, Sir John Tilley, he had a paralytic seizure. He was removed to a nursing home at 34 Welbeck Street, and attended by Dr. Murrell with Sir William Jenner in consultation. For a fortnight his condition improved; then came a relapse. Death followed after an illness which had lasted about a month. On the following Saturday, December 9th, he was laid to rest, not far from Thackeray’s grave, in Kensal Green. Among those present at his funeral were: the most famous survivor of his literary generation, Robert Browning; J. E. Millais, his artistic colleague in so many novels; Mr. Alfred Austin; Frederick Chapman, the head of the publishing firm Chapman and Hall, with which during many years previously he chiefly had to do, his own small interest in which he bequeathed to his family; and an Australian friend, Mr. Rusden, as the representative of those colonies where he had long found some of his most loyal readers.
On the same day that Trollope died there died also, at Cannes, the French socialistic writer Louis Blanc, known to Trollope during the years of his London exile, and, it might have been thought, long forgotten by his English acquaintances. Nevertheless the London papers of December 7th, 1882, devoted a larger space to their comments on the French Radical’s career than to the English novelist’s works. The newspaper verdict was generally represented by The Times, which, after a passing reference to his miscellaneous literary activities, correctly enough reflected the public estimate by emphasising Trollope’s sustained hold on his readers and the uniform level of merit during thirty-five years of unceasing work.
His death was immediately followed by some fall in the demand for his writing. Since then, however, time has redressed the balance after so marked a fashion that, among the leading literary features of the twentieth century, a permanent revival of popular interest in the novels and in the man who wrote them will have a place.
A BIBLIOGRAPHY
OF THE
FIRST EDITIONS OF THE WORKS
OF
ANTHONY TROLLOPE
COMPILED BY MARGARET LAVINGTON
WITH NOTES DRAWN CHIEFLY FROM HIS AUTOBIOGRAPHY
AND FROM INFORMATION KINDLY GIVEN BY HIS SON,
HENRY M. TROLLOPE