Advertising and Authorship: Trollope's The Struggles of Brown, Jones, and Robinson

The Struggles of Brown, Jones and Robinson is a satirical tale on “the present system of advertising” that focuses on the conjunction between ad-writing and fiction writing, between copywriters and literary authors. Robinson, the narrator, is both an advertiser and the fictional author of the memoir we are reading. This double identity allows the narrative simultaneously to acknowledge and to disavow the disturbing similarities between literature and advertising. This paper argues that by lampooning the alleged vices of advertising and trade, Trollope reflects indirectly on his own experience as a new author vying for a place in the crowded market for literary goods. By writing about a specific commercial topic – marketing a new firm and its products – Trollope gave indirect vent to his own concerns, anxieties and frustrations regarding the literary trade he was pursuing. The Struggles of Brown, Jones and Robinson stands out as an odd book in Trollope’s canon: it is less polished than the novels that made him famous and deals exclusively with one specific segment of society (the lower middle classes and their commercial interests) in ways that have appeared unpalatable. My essays reconsiders the oddities of this text within an interpretative framework that is loosely allegorical: the comic focus on entrepreneurship alludes indirectly to the predicaments of new authors facing competition and the difficulties of publishing. By relating The Struggles to the historical sub-text inferred from Trollope’s letters and autobiography, one can gain a better understanding of his unusual foray into the perilous territory of satire.