Writing the Frontier ─ Anthony Trollope Between Britain and Ireland

Writing the Frontier: Anthony Trollope between Britain and Ireland is the first book-length study of the great Victorian novelist's relationship with Ireland, the country which became his second home and was the location of his first personal and professional success. It offers an in-depth exploration of Trollope's time in Ireland as a rising Post Office official, contextualising his considerable output of Irish novels and short stories and his ongoing interest in the country, its people, and its always complicated relationship with Britain.

Trollope's Irish novels were long neglected but are vital to any understanding of his entire oeuvre and when given their just place alter our overall view of the writer and his take on the world. Uniquely among his fellow English novelists, Trollope consciously occupied a mediating position, believing he knew Ireland better than any other Englishman and better than most Irishmen and used his novels to represent that Ireland to an English public.

Trollope's Irish works constitute a vital and distinct group of works, add significantly to our vision of the writer, change the prevalent view that he is always safe and "English", and represent a rich and underestimated contribution to the canon of the nineteenth century Irish novel tout court, complicating the sometimes arbitrary divisions that are drawn between the English and the Irish traditions.

John McCourt, Associate Professor of English Literature, Universita Roma Tre

John McCourt was born and educated in Dublin. He has lived and worked in Italy for over twenty years. He has published widely in the field of Irish Studies, focussing on both nineteenth and twentieth century literature. John is currently an associate Professor of English at Universita Roma Tre. He holds a Ph.D. from the National University of Ireland (University College Dublin) and is a specialist in Joyce Studies and in nineteenth and twentieth century Irish literature. The co-founder of the Trieste Joyce School (1997), he is widely published and best known for The Years of Bloom: Joyce inTrieste 1904-1920, (University of Wisconsin Press/Lilliput Press).