

(King James II was replaced as the leader of England by William III and Mary II in what was known as the Glorious Revolution of 1688.) James Francis Edward Stuart, a Roman Catholic with the support of the Pope, claimed to be the true heir of the British throne, though that claim was denied by the Protestant English (hence the nickname they called him by: The Pretender).

The Pretender: The Pretender, mentioned twice, is James Francis Edward Stuart, the son of the recently deposed King James II.

The Proposer is apparently unaware of this development, and writes that the “very worthy person” got his ideas from Psalmanazar. By the time A Modest Proposal was written, Psalmanazar had been exposed as a fraud. He was a French literary imposter who claimed to be a native of Taiwan (then called “Formosa”) and wrote a made-up account of his travels.

His efforts resulted in over sixty books, a sizable fortune, and fame, and his autobiography. and disciplined himself to write 250 words every fifteen minutes has become part of literary legend. How he paid his groom to wake him every morning at 5:30 a.m. But he had inherited his mother's determination, and managed later to carve out a successful career in the General Post Office while devoting every spare moment to writing. He was the victim of vicious bullying at Harrow and Winchester. Trollope was born in 1815, the product of a formidable mother and a tragically unsuccessful father who was socially ambitious for his sons. But he was also the author of one of the most fascinating autobiographies of the nineteenth century. Anthony Trollope is most famous for his portrait of the professional and landed classes of Victorian England, especially in his Palliser and Barsetshire novels.
