SOURCE: Introduction to Anthony Trollope: The Complete Short Stories, Volume 1: The Christmas Stories, Texas Christian University Press, 1979, pp. i-viii.

In the essay below, Breyer examines Trollope's ambivalence toward the genre of the Christmas tale, and his efforts to avoid sentimentality in his own stories of the type by infusing them with elements of the everyday world, with its "little lacerations of the spirit."

It is best to be candid about this volume. Trollope seems to have been somewhat contradictory in his attitude toward Christmas stories. In his autobiography he expressed a certain dislike for them, yet near the end of his career many of the short stories he wrote were Christmas stories. So whether Trollope himself would approve such a collection is open to question. But it is a question that can be answered perhaps only in the context of his whole artistic career.

Anthony Trollope (1815-1882) is...