It is as if Trollope had tried his hand at becoming a disciple of Dickens and then withdrew, not because the results were uninspiring but because he was attracted to other, far less inhabited territory. Trollope himself viewed The Three Clerks as 'certainly the best novel I had as yet written' (Autobiography 111). . . .It is very witty indeed, remarkably autobiographical, ethically and morally puristic; it is centred in London, reaches toward very drastic action and extreme solutions; it employs parody as a basic principle; it is didactic. In all these ways it is uncharacteristic. — James Kincaid
Introductory material
Characterization
Political and economic history
- Who has given so great a blow to political honesty as Sir Robert Peel?
- Trollope on contemporary fraud, embezzlement, and stock swindles
- The St. Peter who holds “the keys to Elysium”: Trollope's hostility to competitive civil service examinations
Literary Relations
- The Three Clerks as an attempt at a Dickensian novel
- Dickensian style in Trollope's The Three Clerks
Last modified 23 April 2016