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Joanna Trollope

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Joanna Trollope

OBE
Trollope in 2011
Trollope in 2011
BornJoanna Trollope
(1943-12-09) 9 December 1943 (age 80)
Minchinhampton, Gloucestershire, England
Pen nameCaroline Harvey
OccupationNovelist
LanguageEnglish
Period1978–present
Spouse1. David Roger William Potter (1966–1983),
2. Ian Curteis (1985–2001)
Children2 daughters and 2 stepsons
RelativesAnthony Trollope
Website
joannatrollope.com

Joanna Trollope OBE (/ˈtrɒləp/; born 9 December 1943) is an English writer. She also wrote under the pseudonym of Caroline Harvey. Her novel Parson Harding's Daughter won in 1980 the Romantic Novel of the Year Award by the Romantic Novelists' Association.[1]

Biography

Personal life

Trollope was born on 9 December 1943 in her grandfather's rectory in Minchinhampton, Gloucestershire, England, daughter of Rosemary Hodson and Arthur George Cecil Trollope.[2][3] She is the eldest of three.

Trollope is of the same family as the Victorian novelist Anthony Trollope[4] although not a direct descendant, and is a cousin of the writer and broadcaster James Trollope:

"Oddly my name has been no professional help at all! It seems to have made no difference... I admire him hugely, both for his benevolence and his enormous psychological perception".[5]

On 14 May 1966,[3] Trollope married banker David Roger William Potter; they had two daughters, Antonia and Louise, before divorcing in 1983. [2] In 1985, she remarried to the television dramatist Ian Curteis and became a stepmother of two stepsons; she and Curteis divorced in 2001. Today she is a grandmother and lives on her own in London.[6]

Career

Trollope was educated at Reigate County School for Girls followed by St Hugh's College, Oxford. From 1965 to 1967, she worked at the Foreign Office. From 1967 to 1979, she was employed in a number of teaching posts before she became a writer full-time in 1980.

In 2008, she wrote a letter in support of J. K. Rowling's copyright infringement case in America.[7]

In 2009, she donated the short story The Piano Man to Oxfam's 'Ox-Tales' project, four collections of UK stories written by 38 authors. Trollope's story was published in the 'Water' collection.[8] She has written the first novel in Harper Collins updating of the Jane Austen canon, The Austen Project. Her version of "Sense and Sensibility" was published in October 2013 with limited success.

Bibliography

As Joanna Trollope[9]

Some of Joanna Trollope's historical novels are re-edited as Caroline Harvey**

Historical novels

  • Eliza Stanhope (1978)
  • Parson Harding's Daughter (1979)**
  • Leaves from the Valley (1980)**
  • The City of Gems (1981)**
  • The Steps of the Sun (1983)**
  • The Taverner's Place (1986)**[10]

The Austen Project

  • Sense & Sensibility (2013)

Other novels

  • The Choir (1988)
  • A Village Affair (1989)
  • A Passionate Man (1990)
  • The Rector's Wife (1991)
  • The Men and the Girls (1992)
  • A Spanish Lover (1993)
  • The Best of Friends (1998)
  • Next of Kin (1996)
  • Other People's Children (1998)
  • Marrying the Mistress (2000)
  • Girl from the South (2002)
  • Brother and Sister (2004)
  • Second Honeymoon (2006)
  • Friday Nights (2007)
  • The Other Family (2010)
  • Daughters-in-Law (2011)
  • The Soldier's Wife (2012)
  • Balancing Act (2014)
  • City of Friends (2017)
  • An Unsuitable Match (2018)

Non-fiction

  • Britannia's Daughters: Women of the British Empire (1983)

As Caroline Harvey[11]

Legacy Saga

  • Legacy of Love (1983)
  • A Second Legacy (1993)

Historical novels

  • A Castle in Italy (1993)
  • The Brass Dolphin (1997)

Television adaptations

The Choir was made into a five-episode television miniseries in 1995 by the BBC. It starred Jane Asher and James Fox.[12]

Reviews

A Spanish Lover: In The New York Times Betsy Groban wrote, ″Her story is filled with lively, astute and always affectionate insights into the abiding issues of marriage, motherhood and materialism, not to mention the destructive power of envy and the importance of living one's own life. ″[13]

Marrying the Mistress: ″With its sharp eye, light tone and sly, witty pace, Joanna Trollope's ninth novel delivers all the ingredients of romantic comedy, yet ends with a subtle, dark twist.″[14]

Friday Nights: Heather Thompson of The Guardian called Friday Nights "a light but insightful look at a rather conventional cast of characters."[15]

Charlie Lee-Potter of The Independent wrote that Brother & Sister:

[Brother & Sister] wades through the anguish of adoption, scooping up the pain of the adopted child, the agony of the birth mother and the insecurity of the adoptive parent along the way. If I was any one of the characters imprisoned in the murky jelly of this novel, I'd be straight on to the Adoption Agency, demanding to be re-settled with another creator. Joanna Trollope has a subject capable of making us weep at the tragedy and the loss, and yet what does she achieve? She so resolutely makes her characters emote to each other in a ghastly brand of unisex mush that I actually found myself blushing.[16]

See also

References

  1. ^ Awards by the Romantic Novelists' Association, 17 July 2012
  2. ^ a b British novelists since 1960, Gale Group, 1999, p. 323
  3. ^ a b International who's who of authors and writers, Volumen 23, Europa Publications, Taylor & Francis Group, 2008
  4. ^ "Joanna Trollope: You Ask the Questions". The Independent. 3 February 2005.
  5. ^ Joanna Trollope biography, Book Reporter.
  6. ^ Interview With Joanna Trollope, Readers Read
  7. ^ Pauli, Michelle (24 May 2008). "Hay festival: Joanna Trollope backs JK Rowling's court case". The Guardian.
  8. ^ Ox-Tales Archived 18 July 2011 at the Wayback Machine, Oxfam, UK.
  9. ^ Joanna Trollope at fantasticfiction, 17 July 2012
  10. ^ Date on copyright page of my[who?] copy of this title.
  11. ^ Caroline Harvey at fantasticfiction, 17 July 2012
  12. ^ The Choir at IMDb
  13. ^ Groban, Betsy (6 April 1997). "A Spanish Lover". The New York Times.
  14. ^ Frucht, Abby (9 July 2000). "Marrying the Mistress". The New York Times.
  15. ^ Heather Thompson (11 January 2009). "Review: Friday Nights". The Observer.
  16. ^ Lee-Potter, Charlie (1 February 2004). "Brother & Sister by Joanna Trollope". The Independent.
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