Joanna Trollope

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Joanna Trollope OBE

Joanna Trollope in 2011
Born Joanna Trollope
(1943-12-09) 9 December 1943
Minchinhampton, Gloucestershire, England, UK
Pen name Joanna Trollope,
Caroline Harvey
Occupation Novelist
Language English
Nationality British
Genres 1978-present
Spouse(s) 1. David Roger William Potter (1966-1983),
2. Ian Curteis (1985-2001)
Children 2 and 2 stepsons
Relative(s) Anthony Trollope
www.joannatrollope.com

Joanna Trollope OBE (/ˈtrɒləp/; born 9 December 1943), is a British 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

Joanna 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 siblings.

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

Career

Joanna 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.

Trollope's books are generally upmarket family dramas and romances, that somewhat transcend these genres via striking realism in terms of human psychology and relationships. Several of her novels have been adapted for television. The best-known is The Rector's Wife.[citation needed]

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] Joanna has written the first novel in Harper Collins updating of the Jane Austen canon, The Austen Project. Her 2013 version of "Sense and Sensibility" is published in October.

Bibliography

As Joanna Trollope

[9]

Some of Joanna Trollope's historical novels are reedited 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]

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)

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]

Essay

Reviews

Friday Nights:

For all the power careers, single parenthood and enduring ties of the sisterhood, Joanna Trollope shackles her story to men like a suffragette to a lamppost. The result is a light but insightful look at a rather conventional cast of characters.[13]

Brothers and Sisters:

Though the characters seem very realistic, they are not fully developed, however. We learn about each one only what is needed for the author to illustrate the process of adoption and its myriad effects on the people involved in it. Her themes control all the action and the characters themselves, instead of having the action evolve naturally from the characters' personalities and interactions. But readers will be fascinated by this vivid domestic drama, the unusual subject, and the lively characters who bare their souls. When all have had their relationships tested and tempered, they and the reader come to new appreciations of what love really is.[14]
Joanna Trollope's latest novel 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.[15]

See also

References

  1. ↑ Awards by the Romantic Novelists' Association, 2012-07-17 
  2. ↑ 2.0 2.1 British novelists since 1960, Gale Group, 1999, p. 323 
  3. ↑ 3.0 3.1 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 bio at Book Reporter
  6. ↑ Interview With Joanna Trollope, Readers Read
  7. ↑ Michelle Pauli (24 May 2008). "Hay festival: Joanna Trollope backs JK Rowling's court case". The Guardian. 
  8. ↑ Oxfam: Ox-Tales
  9. ↑ Joanna Trollope at fantasticfiction, 2012-07-17 
  10. ↑ date on copyright page of my copy of this title
  11. ↑ Caroline Harvey at fantasticfiction, 2012-07-17 
  12. ↑ The Choir at the Internet Movie Database
  13. ↑ Heather Thompson (11 January 2009). "Review: Friday Nights". -The Observer. 
  14. ↑ Joanna Trollope, "Brother and Sister", (Reviewed by Mary Whipple JUN 01, 2004), MOSTLYFICTION.COM
  15. ↑ Charlie Lee-Potter (1 February 2004). "Brother & Sister by Joanna Trollope". The Independent. 

External links

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