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Nicknamed “Queen of Aga Sagas,” hear it and you might expect an author who specializes in cookbooks or frothy stories set in kitchens – but Joanna Trollope, Who has died at the age of 82There was nothing like it, books that dealt with everything from divorce and empty-nest syndrome to grief and self-harm with compassion and honesty.
Author of best-selling novels during her lifetime, including 1991 rector’s wife She was given the derogatory nickname by the English writer Terence Blacker, due to her stories of love and betrayal set in middle England.
Trollope spoke openly about her dislike of the surname and in an interview Independent In 2020 it was called “conservation”. As to why it stuck, he attributed it to “passive journalism” in which writers repeated it without thinking for years. “Needless to say, it was created by a man,” he said.
While Trollope’s books were domestic in their story and setting, they dealt with heavy subjects with clarity and sympathy. Fans admired her elegant prose and the extraordinary way she described ordinary life.
She was particularly concerned with the social environment, her stories based on the lived realities of class, tradition and social change; fellow novelist fay weldon It was once remarked that Trollope had “the gift of putting his finger on the problem of time”. And as for Agas, only two iconic range cookers have actually featured in his more than 30 published novels.
This interview was far from the first time Trollope took aim at the label. But Hay Festival in 2003Trollope – With the late Jilly Cooper, master of the bonkbuster and fellow queen of popular fiction – Said, “The name itself suggests provincial coziness, and patronizes readers”.
She further added, “Whatever I have written in the books is disappointing and challenging, but I will remain the queen of the Aga saga till my last day. It is extremely upsetting, but it is better than becoming the queen of hearts.”
In response to Trollope’s known disdain for the term, Blacker repeated his words and admitted that he felt “very guilty” about the way the nickname had stuck.
“I’m afraid that phrase has stuck,” said Blacker, the author of Ms. Wise children’s books. “This was the beginning of her career and these tags are distorted and unfair. Now I feel quite remorseful about it. I respect her very much as a writer. She has paid her dues. As she says, it took her 20 years to become an overnight success.”
At the same event, Trollope saved his friend Cooper from the same humiliation he himself faced from the literary elite. “I don’t know anyone who reads better than Jilly Cooper and no one is so eager to pretend she’s not like that.”
Her career as a writer coincided with her mission to take seriously not only popular novels like hers and Cooper’s, but fiction as a whole.
talking to Guardian in 2020Trollope expressed his impatience at older men who dismiss fiction as frivolous entertainment. “Men of my generation say to me: ‘Sure, my wife can read everything you’ve written, but I only read nonfiction,'” she said. “But if you want to know how the retreat from Moscow really felt, you will not read the history of the Napoleonic wars – you will read war and Peace,
He argued, “Imagination can be a physical confession: when you’re within the cover of a book, you can admit all sorts of things that you can’t otherwise. It’s also where you learn about the rest of human life and where you have the most profound experience of life – other than actually living it.”
Following his death, Trollope’s fans have been paying tribute to the author and remembering his elegant and precise prose. books Involved village matter (1989), brother and sister (2003), city of friends (2017), and mother father (2020).
Trollope was born in Gloucestershire, the fifth-generation niece of the English novelist and civil servant Anthony Trollope. She studied English at Oxford University before finding work in the Foreign Office and as a teacher, and then later becoming a full-time writer.
Trollope became famous as a writer with her novel rector’s wifeWhich ousted prominent writers including Jeffrey Archer from the top spot in 1991.
He was awarded a CBE for services to literature in 2019, and serves as a judge for several prestigious literary awards. In later life, he spent much of his time volunteering in prisons and young offender institutions.
Of his inheritance, Trollope told Guardian In 2015: “I’d like to be remembered for something more general: that my novels were a huge relief to a lot of people who felt despair or jealousy or whatever. I’d like my books to say: ‘It’s OK, we all feel that way.'”