Like his first novel The Macdermots of Ballycloran, Anthony Trollope’s final novel The Landleaguers is set in Ireland. That he travelled to Ireland twice in 1882, despite his failing health, is a measure of the seriousness with which he approached the task of representing the contemporary agrarian and political turmoil. It is indicative of what Mary Hamer has described as his “unique stake as an individual in the stability of order in Ireland” (Hamer, 1993, p.xxii). Trollope had spent 18 years resident in Ireland and in his autobiography credited the country with effecting in him a personal and professional transformation: so much of this apparently quintessentially English writer’s identity was dependent on an Irish component that the threatened disruption of not only the system of land tenure in Ireland, but also of the very Union...
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Citation: Siddle, Yvonne. "The Landleaguers". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 28 April 2014 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/sworks.php?rec=true&UID=391, accessed 09 June 2026.]
