Trollope, Anthony, 1815-1882.

Victoria and Tasmania / by Anthony Trollope. New ed. Australia and New Zealand. Selections (London : Chapman and Hall, 1875)

Fox-hunting generated the greatest interest among nineteenth century sports. There was a thriving literature attached to it. The sporting papers included articles describing the runs of the various hunts after foxes, and many Victorian novels included hunting scenes.

“Nimrod”, Charles James Apperley, is often cited as the best of the sporting writers of the period. He was an experienced hunter who wrote for the Sporting Magazine, and later the Sporting Review. His three famous papers on “Melton Mowbray”, “the Road” and “The Turf”, appeared in the Quarterly Review and were reprinted in book form as, The chace, the turf and the road. (1837).

Surtees was an immensely popular sporting novelist who devised the character of John Jorrocks, a Cockney grocer who takes up hunting. Jorrocks first appeared in the New Sporting Magazine in July 1831. The stories were published in book form as Jorrock’s jaunts and jollities in 1838. The original illustrations were by Phiz, but later editions were illustrated by Henry Alken, who specialised in scenes of the hunting field. The success of Jorrocks jaunts led Chapman and Hall to commission Dickens to write Pickwick papers.

John Leech was also employed to illustrate Surtees works, often in colour. Hunting prints were very popular among Victorians, and were commonly seen in clubs, libraries and smoking rooms.

George Whyte-Melville was also a popular sporting novelist, best-remembered now for the unfortunate fact that he met his death in a fall from his horse on the hunting field.

Anthony Trollope was perhaps the best nineteenth century writer on fox-hunting. He was an enthusiastic rider after hounds and managed to work hunting scenes into many of his novels. He visited Australia in 1871 and wrote an account of it, in a series of despatches to the London Daily Telegraph, the articles being published in book form as, Australia and New Zealand (1873). The parts which describe the Australian colonies were re-published in three yellow-backs, each including his impressions of two of the colonies, in 1875. While in Victoria he hunted with local sportsmen; their quarry being kangaroos and dingoes.

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