Orley Farm (novel)

Orley Farm (novel)

Orley Farm is a novel written in the realist mode by Anthony Trollope (1815–82), and illustrated by the Pre-Raphaelite artist John Everett Millais (1829–96). It was first published in monthly shilling parts by the London publisher Chapman and Hall. Although this novel appeared to have undersold (possibly because the shilling part was being overshadowed by magazines, such as The Cornhill, that offered a variety of stories and poems in each issue), Orley Farm became Trollope's personal favourite. The house in the book became a school, which was originally supposed to be the feeder school to Harrow School. It is called Orley Farm School, which Trollope allowed to be named after his book.

This passage from the school website reads: In 1851 the school transferred to a house called "Sunnyside" in Sudbury Hill and began taking boarders, then in the late 1850s, Edward Hastings purchased an additional house, "Julians". Unbeknown to him, this property had previously belonged to the family of Anthony Trollope, and when that author faithfully described it in his famous novel of 1862, "Orley Farm", Hastings recognised the description and sought – and gained – the author's permission to change the name of his school to Orley Farm.