Adapting what Trollope applied only to the years 1859 to 1871, 'I feel confident that in amount no other writer contributed so much . . . to English literature.' (Autobiography, ch. 15) To his forty-seven or so novels must be added a mass of miscellaneous and occasional writing. . . .

To begin with, there are five collections of short stories—Tales of All Countries (1861) and its Second Series (1863), Lotta Schmidt and Other Stories (1867), An Editor's Tales (1870) and Why Frau Frohmann Raised Her Prices: and Other Stories (1882). Many of these are occasional in the sense that their origins seem traceable to incidents in Trollope's own life, not least to his travels. Many are set in foreign locations. To take only three examples, 'Returning Home' (Tales of All Countries: Second Series) with the decision to return by a different route from that by which the travellers had come, the consequent dangers of the river and sub-equatorial forest and the drowning of Mrs Arkwright is obviously related to a reference in the 'Central America' section of The West Indies; 'An Unprotected Female at the Pyramids' (Tales of All Countries) has a parallel in Travelling Sketches; and 'Aaron Trow' (Tales: Second Series), the story of an escaped convict, may well have come from the informant who told Trollope about the prison in Bermuda (The West Indies, ch. 22). The other main source of material was from Trollope's editorial experience. This produced 'The Adventures of Fred Pickering' (Lotta Schmidt) and An Editor's Tales, of which he wrote: There is not an incident in it the outline of which was not presented to my mind by the remembrance of some fact.' (Autobiography, ch. 18)

Certain stock situations recur. To take but one collection (Lotta Schmidt), there are rival lovers for the heroine's hand in 'Miss Ophelia Gledd' and the title-story, and rival loyalties of family and country in 'The Two Generals' and 'The Last Austrian Who Left Vienna'. Conflict of young girl and guardian, of a kind notable in such shorter novels as Linda Tressel and The Golden Lion of Granpere, occurs again in 'La Mère Bauche' (Tales of All Countries) and 'The Lady of Launay' (Why Frau Frohmann). There are one or two comic tales such as 'The Relics of General Chassé' (Tales of All Countries), where a cleric, trying on the leather breeches of the late famous general, finds that some ladytourists have seized on his own broadcloth trousers and cut them up, thinking they were relics of Chassé, and 'Christmas at Thompson Hall' (Why Frau Frohmann), where—very improbably—a lady strays into the wrong bedroom and applies a mustard poultice to someone not her husband, but who later turns out to be her prospective brother-in-law. The end of this tale is foreseen long before it is ever reached.

This is a common fault with the short stories, though it must be said that in 'The Journey to Panama' Miss Viner's not marrying the narrator when she is free to do so and in 'Miss Ophelia Gledd' (both Lotta Schmidt) the heroine's final preference for the Englishman, Pryor, over the American, Hokins, in each case represent the unexpected. Trollope did not mind the reader's foreseeing in the novels, and in the novels, too, he can afford to be leisurely and spacious, but in the short stories such laxity often means an anecdote strung out at excessive length. Sometimes this is redeemed by the force of the latter stages. Thus in 'Lotta Schmidt' the scathing remarks of the immature Planken about his older rival, the musician Crippel, finally confirm Lotta in her appreciation of the latter's character against all the superficial advantages of the younger man. There is a rare concision in the sentence: '[Planken] said that Herr Crippel was too old to play the zither: too old! Some people are too young to understand'.

It would be wrong to claim that any of Trollope's short stories have the intensity that we associate with later, more dedicated practitioners of the art, but the better ones do maintain our interest throughout. In 'The Adventures of Fred Pickering' (Lotta Schmidt), for example, we are concerned for the outcome of Pickering's headstrong, but also wrong-headed, determination to become a writer. He makes an imprudent marriage against his father's wishes and leaves the law for journalism. He gradually becomes more impoverished and more irritable. His high ideas of his own literary skills lead him to resign one job and be declared unsuitable for another. He refuses payment for rejected work, even though his wife is pregnant and his savings are dwindling. It is only the prospect of the workhouse and not, as he so typically and impractically had thought, 'of some high-toned extremity of destitution' that brings him back to his senses, to Manchester and the lawyer's office. Likewise, though in a lower key, 'Why Frau Frohmann Raised Her Prices' is a tale of obstinacy, in which the hostess of the Peacock at Brunnenthal, benevolent but neither to be thwarted nor contradicted, resists economic pressures and sound advice in the interests of her poorer guests, even to the extent of seeking inferior supplies. She only surrenders when she finds that one of her regular visitors is now receiving a higher salary, and even then she retains the lower rate for some of her less wealthy visitors.

'Alice Dugdale' (Why Frau Frohmann) is a weaker version of something like the Jane Eyre-Blanche Ingram-Rochester triangle. Alice is the equivalent of Jane and Georgiana Wanless, a statuesque but rather silent beauty, not unlike Griselda Grantly, that of Blanche. The Wanless family conspire to secure Major John Rossiter for Georgiana and the odds seem all in their favour. His father, however, the village parson, hopes that John will choose Alice. Because Georgiana has captured John's attention, Alice attempts to put an end to the relationship. The end, however, is predictable—'the womanliness of the one, as compared with the worldliness of the other, conquered him completely'. (ch. 10) This tale illustrates something which, though often present, disturbs us less in the novels than it does here. We feel that in a situation as intimate as this we never get near enough to the characters. By contrast, in the novels we know them long enough. When Trollope has a character say, as he does here, 'I have gone through the fire and have come out without being much scorched' (ch. 9), we immediately realise that he is alleging experience which he has not shown.

The interest in 'Mary Gresley' (An Editor's Tales) is sustained by its emotional unity, a pervasive tone of tender sadness. Mary, in love with a curate of frail health and strict views, comes to the editor with a story, that of her own frustrating engagement and its likely outcome. He speaks better of it than it deserves and, though unable to accept it, agrees to help her with a new story. He also helps to place two others. Mary and her mother are living in genteel poverty and this together with her ill-rewarded effort develops the reader's sympathy for her. Her lover, Donne, away in Dorset, falls ill. She goes to him and promises, in compliance with his views, never to write a novel and indeed burns the one she has written. Donne dies, and eight years later Mary marries a missionary, going to 'some forlorn country' where she dies. Altogether a sad life and a sad tale.

'Malachi's Cove', one of Trollope's most impressive short stories, is in many ways a sport in his work. The setting, the characters, the action, the emotions are all unusual for him. Instead of middle-class figures in a Victorian drawing-room we find ourselves amid the harsh life of seaweed gatherers in a Cornish cove between Tintagel and Bosinney. There Malachi Tringlos or, more accurately, his granddaughter Mally pursues the trade.

She was a wild-looking, almost unearthly creature, with wild-flowing, black, uncombed hair, small in stature, with small hands and bright black eyes. . . . She had no friends and but few acquaintances. . . . [It was] said that she was fierce and ill-natured . . . a thorough little vixen.

A neighbouring farmer's son, Barty Gunliffe, trespasses on what she regards as her domain. There are harsh words. His skill does not match hers and he does not know the areas that are dangerous as the huge waves roll in. He falls in and Mally rescues him, but as she brings him, senseless, to safety, her grandfather predicts—aceurately—that the incident will be misinterpreted and that, if he dies, she will be charged with murder. When Barty recovers, he reveals the truth; there is a reconciliation and, of course, an eventual marriage. The ending, however, is neither so trite nor so sentimental as such a bald summary might suggest, and the narrative of Barty's accident, danger and difficult rescue has about it an excitement unusual in Trollope. There is something similar in the description of the fight in the water in 'Aaron Trow'. A brief section from 'Malachi's Cove' must suffice for example:

Straining herself down, laying herself over the long bending handle of the hook, she strove to grasp him with her right hand. But she could not do it; she could only touch him.

Then came the next breaker, forcing itself on with a roar, looking to Mally as though it must certainly knock her from her resting-place, and destroy them both. But she had nothing for it but to kneel, and hold by her hook. . . .