“Anthony Trollope: The Art of Modesty,” an exhibition drawn from the rich collection of serial publications, first editions, letters and other materials in New York University’s Fales Library, will be on display from Thursday, February 26 through Friday, May 1. NYU’s Fales Library is located on the third floor of the NYU Bobst Library, 70 Washington Square South. The exhibition is open weekdays. For further information and to view the exhibition, the public may call (212) 998-2596.
Opening the exhibition on Thursday, February 26, 6:30 p.m. will be a panel discussion on Trollope and his work featuring biographer N. John Hall, author of Trollope: A Biography and Max Beerbohm Caricatures; Alfred Corn, author of seven collections of poetry, most recently, Present, and a first novel, Part of His Story; Elizabeth Korn, who teaches at Yeshiva University and is at work on a publishing history of George Eliot; and Steven Amarnick, who is curator of the Fales exhibit on Trollope and is currently writing a book entitled Anthony Trollope and the Liberal Imagination.
Trollope (1815-1882), author of 47 novels and many volumes of nonfiction and short stories, is perhaps more popular today than in his own age. Many claim that he thought of himself as, at best, a flawed craftsman, and not a genuine literary artist. This exhibition presents a different picture of the author, showing how his humble persona, while not quite a pose, was still carefully cultivated. The exhibition explores the subtle ways Trollope asserted how his own brand of fiction was as good as, perhaps even better than, that of his contemporaries Charles Dickens, William Thackeray, and George Eliot, and it illustrates how Trollope was far more of an intellectual than usually thought, especially in the way he tested his complex political and social doctrine in book after book.
On display will be first editions; and letters by Anthony Trollope, his mother Mrs. Frances Trollope, Dickens, Thackerary, George Eliot and others, along with the original parts of such works as Can You Forgive Her?, The Way We Live Now, The Last Chronicle of Barset, Middlemarch, The Pickwick Papers and David Copperfield.