SOURCE: “‘The Unnatural Ruin’: Trollope and Nineteenth-Century Irish Fiction,” Nineteenth-Century Literature, Vol. 37, No. 3, December, 1982, pp. 358-82.

In the following essay, Tracy studies Trollope's Irish novels and argues that his work in Ireland made it possible for Trollope to view English society in an original manner when he began writing about it.

The sun was setting beautifully behind the trees, and its imperfect light through the foliage gave the unnatural ruin a still more singular appearance, and brought into my mind thoughts of the wrong, oppression, misery and despair, to which some one had been subjected, by what I saw before me.

Trollope, The Macdermots of Ballycloran

Trollope himself, in An Autobiography, was the first to recognize the importance of Ireland in his development as a civil servant and as a writer. “I went to the Colonel [his superior in the Post Office] boldly, and volunteered for Ireland if...