Joanna Trollope, best-selling chronicler of ordinary life, dies at 82 Books

British novelist Joanna Trollope, whose depiction of British domestic life made her one of the country’s most widely read authors, has died at the age of 82.

Trollope published more than 30 novels during her writing career, which began in 1980. Her early works, writing under the pseudonym Caroline Harvey, were historical romances, but from the mid-1980s onwards, she turned to contemporary fiction, a shift that would define her reputation.

Her daughters said in a statement that she died peacefully at her home on Thursday.

James Gale, the author’s literary agent, said: “It is with great sadness that we learn of the death of Joanna Trollope, one of our dearly loved, popular and widely enjoyed novelists.” “Joanna will be mourned by her children, grandchildren, family, countless friends and, of course, her readers.”

Trollope’s breakthrough came with novels including The Rector’s Wife, which knocked major authors off the top of the charts in 1991, and later works including A Village Affair and Mum & Dad, which dealt with issues ranging from infidelity, remarriage, parenting and adoption to the pressures faced by the so-called “sandwich generation” caring for their children and parents.

Although critics sometimes described her as “middlebrow” or “cozy” – Terence Blacker called her novels “Aga epics” – Trollope long rejected such classifications. In a 2006 interview with The Guardian, she said: “Actually, the novels are quite subversive, very depressing. It’s all smug, isn’t it?” Rather than fictionalized versions of domestic life, critics praised her books for their honest reflections on the dilemmas of ordinary people, addressing themes of broken families, difficult relationships, love, and betrayal.

Born in 1943 in Gloucestershire, Trollope is a distant descendant of Anthony Trollope, the famous 19th-century novelist known for The Chronicles of Barsetshire and The Palliser. She studied English at St Hugh’s College, Oxford, before joining the Foreign Office. She then turned to teaching. During this period, while balancing work and raising two daughters, she began writing seriously.

Throughout the 1990s and 2000s, she produced a succession of best-selling books, including A Village Affair, Next of Kin, Other People’s Children, and Marrying the Mistress. Many of them have been adapted for television, bringing their stories to a wider audience. Explaining her success, she said in a 1993 interview: “I think my books are just the dear old traditional novel that is quietly making a comeback.”

Trollope’s later novels showed her awareness of social and economic change. In City of Friends she turned her attention to the pressures women face in corporate life. In Mum and Dad, which she published when she was in her 70s, she explored the pressures of caring for the elderly.

The changing expectations of women are a central concern in Trollope’s work. “I was born at the end of 1943, and there were almost no women working in my generation,” she said in a 2017 interview with the Radio Times. “I knew I wanted it, and I did it. Then you get my daughters’ generation – I have a 48-year-old and a 45-year-old, who are about the same age as the characters in City of Friends – and they are all working. By the time you get to my 18-year-old granddaughter’s generation, they won’t think about stopping working.” In a 1994 episode of Desert Island Discs, she again addressed criticism from men who considered her books to be trivial, replying: “It is a grave mistake to think that great things matter more than small things.”

She has been praised for her ability to express the hidden concerns of everyday life in her work – fellow novelist Faye Weldon once said that Trollope had a “knack for putting her finger on the problem of the times”. In a 2020 interview with The Guardian, Trollope echoed this sentiment, speaking about her motivations as a writer: “What I’m trying to do in all these novels is to reflect a contemporary preoccupation. I’m not offering any solutions. I’m simply saying: ‘Can we continue the conversation?'” Fiction is valuable precisely because it can allow readers, she said, “to admit all kinds of things that you can’t acknowledge otherwise.”

Outside of writing, Trollope served as a judge for several major literary awards and was an advocate for literacy and public libraries. She was awarded an OBE in 1996 and was later elevated to an OBE for services to literature. In later life, she also spent time volunteering in prisons and young offender institutions, and was a patron of several charities.

Trollope married City banker, David Roger William Potter, in 1966. The couple had two daughters, Louise and Antonia, and divorced in 1983. Two years later, she married television playwright Ian Curtis and became a stepmother to his two sons. The couple divorced in 2001.

Of her legacy, Trollope told The Guardian in 2015: “I would like people to remember me for something more general: that my novels were a great comfort to a lot of people who felt despondent or jealous or whatever. I want my books to say: ‘It’s okay, we all feel that way.’”

Trollope is survived by her two daughters and grandchildren.