Joanna Trollope was educated at Reigate County School for Girls followed by St Hugh's College, Oxford. From 1965 to 1967, she worked at the Foreign Office. From 1967 to 1979, she was employed in a number of teaching posts before she became a writer full-time in 1980. Trollope was formerly married to the television dramatist Ian Curteis. She is distantly related to Victorian novelist Anthony Trollope and is a cousin of the writer and broadcaster James Trollope:
Oddly my name has been no professional help at all! It seems to have made no difference...I admire him hugely, both for his benevolence and his enormous psychological perception.
Trollope's books are generally upmarket family dramas and romance, that somewhat transcend these genres via striking realism in terms of human psychology and relationships. Several of her novels have been adapted for television. The best-known is
The Rector's Wife.
In 2008, she wrote a letter in support of J. K. Rowling's copyright infringement case in America.
In 2009, she donated the short story
The Piano Man to Oxfam's 'Ox-Tales' project, four collections of UK stories written by 38 authors. Trollope's story was published in the 'Water' collection.