Abstract:
SINCE TROLLOPE’S OEUVRE IS SO VAST, and largely comprises long novels, it is understandable that discussions of his output have often overlooked his shorter fiction. In recent years, nonetheless, his short stories have won more attention, and especially the six stories from An Editor’s Tales (1870), which John Sutherland has singled out as the writer’s ‘most sustained and self-analytical achievement in short fiction’, the ‘high plateau’ of his career in this genre.1 The tendency of most of this critical writing has been to focus on the male narrator-editor – a complex topic, and one that is certainly important. But each of the tales features one or more prominent female characters, and they are worth paying attention to as well, especially given the recent interest in gender as a theme in Trollope’s fiction more widely.