Biography Trollope, Anthony: Autobiography, v.1, 8 March 2008.

[Patricia]

Published posthumously, after the author’s death in 1882, but written in the 1870s.
This is not a kiss-and-tell autobiography. Instead Trollope details his work with the Post Office, his travels, his writing habits, and his earnings.

An extract:
“It will not, I trust, be supposed by any reader that I have intended in this so-called autobiography to give a record of my inner life. No man ever did so truly,--and no man ever will. Rousseau probably attempted it, but who doubts but that Rousseau has confessed in much the thoughts and convictions rather than the facts of his life? If the rustle of a woman’s petticoat has ever stirred my blood; if a cup of wine has been a joy to me; if I have thought tobacco at midnight in pleasant company to be one of the elements of an earthly paradise; if now and again I have somewhat recklessly fluttered a £5 note over a card-table;--of what matter is that to any reader? I have betrayed no woman. Wine has brought me to no sorrow. It has been the companionship of smoking that I have loved, rather than the habit. I have never desired to win money, and I have lost none. To enjoy the excitement of pleasure, but to be free from its vices and ill effects,--to have the sweet, and leave the bitter untasted,--that has been my study. The preachers tell us that this is impossible. It seems to me that hitherto I have succeeded fairly well. I will not say that I have never scorched a finger,--but I carry no ugly wounds.”

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