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Reviewed by:
  • South Africa
  • Lize Kriel
Anthony Trollope . South Africa. 2 volumes. Gloucestershire: Nonsuch, 2006 [1878]. Distributed outside North America by Tempus Publishing Ltd, The Mill, Brimscombe Port, Stroud, Gloucestershire GL5 2QG, U.K. Distributed in North America by Independent Publishers Group, 814 North Franklin Street, Chicago, Ill. 60610. 224 pp. Maps. Bibliography. Index. $19.95. Paper.

Anthony Trollope's account of his travels through South Africa in 1877 was very popular among the Victorians; by 1878 it had already reached its fourth edition. There have been several attempts to make this travel account accessible to later audiences, including a noteworthy annotated edition edited by John Davidson (Balkema Press, 1973), as well as other facsimile reprints, still in print. This new two-volume edition, however, does very little to explain to twenty-first-century readers why rereading his nineteenth-century reportage on South Africa should be worthwhile. It does almost nothing to advise readers on how to give meaning to this almost 130-year-old account; furthermore, we do not know to what extent the nameless editors have intervened in the text itself. Has anything been removed from the 1877 edition? Has spelling been adapted? Have concepts been modernized? The authorless two-page introductions to "the modern edition" of the two respective volumes also seem ignorant of each other's existence, and they are both very superficial; the introduction to the first volume, in particular, does not portray a very knowledgeable grip on South African history.

The introduction to the second volume of the travel account rightfully points out that Trollope, perhaps better known as an extremely prolific writer of fiction, lived "during the height of the British empire." But this South Africa book followed upon his several earlier works (in his own words, "part travelogue, part guidebook, part political commentary") on the West Indies, North America, Australia, and New Zealand. It would be illuminating to ascertain what Trollope's commentary reveals about contemporaneous perceptions and expectations about empire "at home" and in various "abroads." After all, as others have pointed out, Trollope's extensive travels set him apart from most other Victorian novelists when it came to their perception of cultural difference in various parts of the English-speaking world.

While there has been no lack of scholarly interest in Trollope in recent years, most such studies have been produced by scholars in the fields of literary [End Page 238] and cultural studies, rather than from historians. It is not that historians do not know about Trollope; indeed he is not infrequently cited in historians' works, and the Trollope text probably deserves more prominence in canonical South African historiography. Yet while the author of the introduction to this Nonsuch edition suggests that Trollope's surprising attitude toward indigenous communities and his criticism of imperial policies and colonial attitudes merit our attention today, the remark that Trollope was "keen to point out good points [of the colonised] as well as their more uncivilised side" makes one wonder whether the publishers of this 2006 edition have distanced themselves from the imperial gaze at all.

This 2006 Nonsuch edition of Trollope's South Africa is not merely a text, but an exercise in source publication itself, which invites some deconstructionist intervention. I cannot disagree with the publishers that Trollope still makes fascinating reading in our time. But Trollope's Victorian writing requires thorough contextualization and at least some historical explanation in order to realize its potential to contribute to and further enrich the current vibrant historical research on imperial networks and colonial encounters. A new, annotated edition would have had plenty to draw upon. Then again, as much as I think that a significant opportunity was missed with this new edition, perhaps at least such a republication may urge a new generation of historians to pay renewed attention to Anthony Trollope.

Lize Kriel
University of Pretoria
Pretoria, South Africa
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