Orley Farm is a novel written in the realist mode by Anthony Trollope (1815–82), and illustrated by the Pre-Raphaelite artist John Everett Millais. It was first published in monthly shilling parts by the London publisher Chapman and Hall. Although the novel appeared to have undersold (possibly because the shilling part was being overshadowed by magazines such as The Cornhill that offered a variety of stories and poems in each issue), Orley Farm was later named by Trollope as his personal favourite among his novels. George Orwell said the book contained "one of the most brilliant descriptions of a lawsuit in English fiction."

The Orley Farm property depicted in the book was based on a farm in Harrow, London once owned by the Trollope family. The real-life farm became a school that was originally designated as a feeder school to Harrow. It was renamed Orley Farm School after the novel, with Trollope's permission.

Background

Orley Farm was written between July 1860 and June 1861. The novel was first published in monthly shilling parts by the London publisher Chapman and Hall from March 1861 to October 1862, with forty wood-engraving illustrations by John Everett Millais. Each part comprised two illustrations that were situated at the front, and two to three chapters that followed. The first volume, also published by Chapman and Hall, appeared in December 1861, before the novel's serialisation was completed.

A darker theme, also seen in Trollope's other books such as Castle Richmond and Framley Parsonage, is that the changing Victorian world often brought anguish and disillusionment to those who had started out with great advantages. A related theme, which recurs frequently throughout Trollope's works, is the threatened loss of one's house or property.

Reception

George Eliot praised Orley Farm but found the "comic relief" scenes somewhat out-of-place, and wondered why The Spectator enthused over those passages. She wrote in a January 1862 letter to Sara Sophia Hennell: "I have read most of the numbers of Orley Farm, and admire it very much, with the exception of such parts as I have read about Moulder and Co., which by the way, I saw in glancing at a late Spectator, the sapient critic there selects for peculiar commendation."

Trollope offered his own comments about Orley Farm and his regard for it. In Volume I of his autobiography, he wrote: "The plot of Orley Farm is probably the best I have ever made; but it has the fault of declaring itself, and thus coming to an end too early in the book. When Lady Mason tells her ancient lover [Sir Peregrine Orme] that she did forge the will, the plot of Orley Farm has unravelled itself;—and this she does in the middle of the tale."

In his BBC Maestro writing class on "Writing Bestselling Fiction," author Ken Follett describes how he himself examined the book as a way to manage multiple character groups. "Read Orley Farm by Anthony Trollope, which is a complex courtroom drama with a large cast. Note how every time there’s a story development, he goes right round the circle, dramatising the way it affects the destiny of that particular character or group of characters. Mechanical but brilliant. To extend the exercise, make a diagram of how these characters all relate to one another. Some are neighbours, some relatives, some know each other through work. It will take you a while, but it’s a strong exercise in how to write a novel with multiple character groups. In fact, I did this myself when I read it."

Notes

References

  • Oxford Reader's Companion to Trollope. ed. R. C. Terry. Oxford University Press. 1999. 622 pp.
  • Cockshut, A. O. J. Anthony Trollope: A Critical Study. New York University Press. 1968. 256 pp.
  • Epperly, Elizabeth R. Patterns of Repetition in Trollope. Catholic University of America Press. 1989. 238 pp.
  • Lansbury, Coral. The Reasonable Man: Trollope's Legal Fiction. Princeton University Press. 1981. 228 pp.