SOURCE: Trollope, Joanna, and David Finkle. “Joanna Trollope: Family Plots with Untidy Endings.” Publishers Weekly 244, no. 5 (3 February 1997): 80-1.

In the following interview, Trollope discusses her career, the reasons why she writes under a pseudonym, and the themes of change and disappointment in her novels.

A journalist invited to visit Joanna Trollope in her grey-stone, peak-roofed home in Coln St. Aldwyns, Gloucestershire immediately sees the vitality and matter-of-fact charm that define her sharply nuanced and witty portraits of English middle-class life. Although Trollope doesn't usually allow reporters into her home, she has broken her rule for PW, greeting us as she would a long-awaited weekend guest.

Tall, blonde, riding-crop-thin and dressed English country casual, Trollope ushers us into a capacious study where two upholstered, high-backed chairs sit perpendicular to a welcoming fireplace. She's already launched—as so many middle- and upper-class Britons are regularly compelled to do—into some...