First published in 1972, the second edition of this highly respected classic of Trollope criticism will be welcomed by Trollope scholars everywhere. David Skilton examines the literary background against which Trollope wrote, and drawing on the vast evidence of mid-Victorian periodical criticism, he shows how this criticism controlled the novelist's creativity. He then goes on to examine Trollope's particular type of realism in the context of the theories of literary imagination current in the 1860s. 'A book I admire. It has been of great value to me.' - J. Hillis Miller 'The first and still the best study of Trollope's relationships, connections and interactions with the literary world of his own time. Skilton's is the necessary introduction to any serious investigation of Trollope's fiction.' - John Sutherland