the bar and other professions. Full citizenship and rights, including the right to sit in Parliament, were granted in 1858 — only seven years before Trollope began writing Nina Balatka. By this time wealthy Jewish families were growing in number. This upward mobility and increasing economic and political power no doubt made the British upper classes envious and resentful, fuelling anti-semitism. Trollope chose to have Nina published anonymously in Blackwood's Magazine for reasons which he described in his autobiography: CONTENTS [1] Why did Trollope start his "new" career with a novel whose central theme was a subject of distaste at best — more likely revulsion — to the vast majority of the reading public? Perhaps the nature of the novel itself led him to consider publishing it anonymously, although we know he was not averse to controversial subjects. In his first book, The Macdermots of Ballycloran, which he thought had the best plot of all his novels, the principal female character is seduced by a scoundrel and dies giving birth to an illegitimate child. Certainly Nina was well-suited for the experiment because of it's different setting and subject matter. Perhaps further to disguise his authorship, Trollope wrote Nina in a style of prose that reads almost like a translation from a foreign language. The experiment did not last long enough to test Trollope's hypothesis. Mr. Hutton, critic for the Spectator, recognized Trollope as the author and so stated in his review. Trollope did not deny the accusation. One cannot discuss Nina Balatka without addressing the question, was Trollope himself anti-semitic? A careful reading of his works does not provide a clear answer. Jews appear in some of his books and are referred to in others, often as disreputable characters or money-lenders. They are seldom mentioned by his Christian characters with respect, probably realistically reflecting the sentiments of the classes he wrote about. Some of his greatest villains in his later novels — Melmotte in The Way We Live Now (1875) and Lopez in The Prime Minister (1876) — are rumored to be Jewish, but Trollope never unequivocally identifies them as Jewish. Perhaps his Christian characters expect them to be Jewish because they are foreigners and villains. However, if one ignores the dialogue of his characters, even the descriptive and editorial comments by Trollope himself at first seem anti-semitic. He
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