ABSTRACT
Trollope died at the end of 1882 and his Autobiography. though written in the mid-1870s, was not published until 1883. There is substantial critical disagreement over the effect of the Autobiography on the decline ofTrollope's reputation after his death. Many critics have seen in these reminiscences the cause for Trollope's dramatic collapse of reputation while other critics warn against this conclusion. 1 However, most critics agree that the Autobiography is one of Trollope's greatest books. 2 In 1923, Michael Sadleir had called Trollope's Autobiography a 'queer bleak text-book on the mechanics and economics of novel-writing' (p. v). But in 1987, J. Hillis Miller called these reminiscences 'perhaps the most extraordinary revelation of the mode of production and dissemination of a large fictional oeuvre we have for the whole Victorian period' (Ethics, p. 82). The status ofthe 'mechanics' of fiction had changed by the time Miller was writing, and Trollope's Autobiography had become 'rich' instead of 'bleak.' An Autobiography becomes even more significant when we realise that Trollope's emphasis on the mechanics of fiction reveals his own insecurities about the manliness of the male novelist.
