SOURCE: “Trollope to His Readers: The Unreliable Narrator of An Autobiography,” in Biography: An Interdisciplinary Quarterly, Vol. 19, No. 1, Winter, 1996, pp. 1-18.

In the following essay, Allen examines Trollope's An Autobiography as an extension of Trollope's social persona, viewing the work as a type of communication addressed to a particular audience.

Trollope's An Autobiography, written in the mid-1870s and published posthumously in 1883, is a curious work, especially when considered in terms of its audience. On the surface it is a well-known author's account of his career, chiefly written for admirers of his fiction. More closely examined, it seems designed to baffle these readers as much as to inform them. It wilfully courts their misunderstanding, seemingly as a protest against a simplistic interpretation of Trollope and his books.

Trollope's sense of his audience is evident from the main autobiographical tradition that he chooses to follow. The book begins as...