Trollope, Anthony | A remarkable association copy inscribed by Effie C. Millais (née Gray)

Property from an Important American Collection

Anthony Trollope

The Small House at Allington. London: Smith, Elder and Co., 65, Cornhill. 1864

2 volumes, 8vo. Inscribed by Effie C. Millais on the title-pages, 18 wood-engraved illustrations by J.E. Millais, with "hobbledehoya" on volume 1, p.33 and p.70 misnumbered (no issue significance); occasional light spotting, primarily to plates and adjacent leaves, marginal tear to lower outer corner of p. 87. Publisher's grass-green patterned cloth, covers blocked in gilt and blind, spines blocked and lettered in gilt, grey chocolate endpapers with the outside sheets printed in black with publisher's advertisements; inner joints of volume I and II weakened, especially to volume I, wear to spines with some very minor loss, volume I a little cocked. Collector's green cloth slipcase with folding chemise.

First edition, an exceptional association copy inscribed by Effie C. Millais (née Gray), the wife of Trollope’s great friend and illustrator of this book, J.E. Millais.

The fifth book in the Chronicles of Barsetshire series.

Effie C. Millais (née Gray) married her family friend, John Ruskin, when she was 19 and he ten years her senior. Ruskin introduced Effie to a young artist protégé of his, J.E. Millais. Ruskin and Gray’s marriage crumbled due to Ruskin’s dismissive treatment of his wife and the “non-consummation” of the relationship; eventually, with Millais’s support, Effie sought a controversial annulment and married Ruskin’s protégé, with whom she had eight children. Millais went on to achieve immense success as an artist, not just through painting, but as a prolific illustrator of books also.

It was through The Cornhill Magazine that Trollope first encountered his future friend and collaborator, J.E. Millais, as recounted in his autobiography—

“I think it was in March...1860 that Mr George Smith—to whose enterprise we owe not only the Cornhill Magazine but the Pall Mall Gazette,—gave a sumptuous dinner to his contributors. It was a memorable banquet in many ways, but chiefly so to me because on that occasion I first met many men who afterwards became my most intimate associates. It can rarely happen that one such occasion can be the first starting point of so many friendships!”

Trollope and Millais would hunt and holiday together as well as working on four books of Trollope’s: Framley Parsonage, Orley Farm, The Small House at Allington and Phineas Finn. Indeed, Millais was Trollope’s best-loved illustrator. Like many of Trollope’s other works, The Small House at Allington began as a serial in The Cornhill Magazine, appearing from July to December 1862 and later being published in the present two-volume book form in April 1864. 

Significantly, The Cornhill Magazine is what Gray is holding in Millais’s Portrait of Effie Gray, circa 1873 (see comp image). Millais had originally painted his youngest son, John Guille Millais, on his mother’s lap, and later chose to entirely remove him and replace it with a copy of the magazine he had drawn for on so many occasions. Effie Gray was intimately involved with Millais’s career and regularly advised him and advocated for him in the social circles they moved in. This considerable involvement is underlined not only through Gray’s tenderly held copy of Cornhill in place of her child, but further by this exceedingly rare association copy where Effie has carefully wrought her married name on the titles.

Effie was intensely socially aware, as her letters home from Venice attest; she evocatively describes the latest fashions and high culture (see Lutyens (ed.) 1965). Trollope’s literature and Millais’s illustrations contained similarly acute reflections on Victorian society. They also had a considerable impact directly onto the elite. If Dickens’ serials were read by the masses, Trollope’s serials were read by the middle and upper classes. Indeed, a critic remarked in 1861: “no London belle dared to pretend to consider herself literary, who did not know the latest intelligence about the state of Lucy Robarts' heart, and Griselda Grantley's flounces”, referring to characters from Framley Parsonage and The Small House at Allington. Further, when Millais illustrated a dress in the Framley Parsonage, Princess Mary of Cambridge and Lady Caroline Guest were seen wearing dresses copied from his designs just weeks later. When this is considered with Effie’s description by Elizabeth Browning as “exquisitely dressed”, and her deep involvement with her husband’s creative output, Millais’s corpus of literary illustrations should be considered with her in mind.

We have not traced any other association copy inscribed by Effie Gray, making this example a precious rarity and certainly a monument to three of the most important figures in Victorian society at the time.

REFERENCE:

Sadleir 18

PROVENANCE:

Effie C. Gray (ownership inscription, 1864) — John Lowe (bookplate) — Kenneth A. Lohf (bookplate; his sale, Christie's New York, 20 November 1992, lot 136)