The sense of urgency that ordinarily attends the last few pages of a novel is absent as one approaches the end--but not the conclusion--of _The Landleaguers_, knowing that the story is to be terminated at the place where Anthony Trollope had the stroke that ended his writing career and, a month later, his life. The reader, instead of racing to the conclusion, tends to linger, watching for any clue as to the impending blow, dreading the moment when the storyteller closes the book for an unexpected interruption, never to return. At least the stroke did not occur during the writing, with the pen dropping from his hand in midsentence. He actually dictated these pages to his son Harry on the morning of November 3, 1882; on that evening he suddenly fell silent while everyone else was laughing at the reading of a comic novel after dinner in the home of his friend John Tilley, and it was apparent that he had had a stroke, leaving him with paralysis of his right side and inability to speak. Trollope made two trips to Ireland during his last year to familiarize himself with the efforts at land reform and the accompanying violence that he depicted in _The Landleaguers_; he returned for a second visit after he had already begun writing it. This was the most topical of his novels, and he interviewed several government officials and other knowledgeable Irishmen, but not any of the Landleaguers--those who advocated reform measures that would infringe on the rights of property. Indeed, he interrupted his story of "our three heroines," declaring it necessary to describe the "political circumstances of the day" with an entire chapter. Although Trollope had personal affection for Ireland as the place where he had spent eighteen years and had begun his writing, he was a son of England first and foremost. He had no sympathy for rebellion. Events on the ground in 1882 marched right through his story, including a reference to the murder of Lord Frederick Cavendish on his first day on the job as Chief Secretary for Ireland, and of his Under Secretary T. H. Burke, in May, eleven days before Trollope arrived to begin his research. And in August, five members of a Joyce family were murdered--a tragedy he incorporated into his story.