SOURCE: "The Case for Trollope's Short Stories," in Modern Philology, Vol. 83, No. 2, November 1985, pp. 172-78.

The following essay is a review of Betty Jane Breyer's edition of The Complete Short Stories. In it, Navakas finds Trollope's stories of interest primarily for their relationship to his novels, for which they often served as experiments and trials.

Trollope's short stories, like those of his contemporaries, have scarcely evoked the tributes of literary historians or the accolades of modern readers. Not only were such narratives as "Aaron Trow," "An Unprotected Female at the Pyramids," and "Christmas Day at Kirby Cottage" hastily deserted by Victorian audiences, having received only slightly more attention from nineteenth-century Americans, but their exile has also been perpetuated on the periodical shelves of modern libraries, diminished not at all by the increased popularity of grander Victorian fictions. Marking the Trollope centenary, Betty Jane Slemp Breyer, with the publication...