Born: 10 March 1779, United Kingdom
Died: 6 October 1863
Country most active: International
Also known as: Fanny Trollope
From Woman: Her Position, Influence and Achievement Throughout the Civilized World. Designed and Arranged by William C. King. Published in 1900 by The King-Richardson Co. Copyright 1903 The King-Richardson Co.:
English critic of American domestic life
Americans have not generally loved Mrs. Trollope. She wrote Domestic Manners of the Americans after three years’ residence in the United States. She was a keen observer, especially of faults, and she described what she saw in a most caustic, satirical, and sometimes vulgar manner. She pictured Americans as coarse, selfish, intemperate, affected, indelicate, and generally ridiculous. The descriptions were overdrawn and were a bitter medicine to the people described, while they afforded a vast fund of amusement to the English. America was then young (1832) and probably profited by Mrs. Trollope’s satire, even though it was coarse.
After a few years she renewed her attack on America in The Adventures of Jonathan Jefferson Whitlaw. This was well founded in fact, for she pictured the miseries of the colored people of the Southern States. The Vicar of Wrexhill is counted her best work. Other books came at the rate of two or more a year. She wrote A Visit io Italy in much the same caustic style of her books concerning America, but people had too much reverence for that classical country and did not relish her ridicule, as they did when she dealt with unclassical and upstart America.
She at length proceeded to satirize people of her own land in Hargrave, Jessie Phillips, and The Lauringtons. The first deals with the man of fashion, the second with the new poor-laws, and the third with the “superior people,” the “bustling Botherbys” of society.
One especially interesting thing about the life of Mrs. Trollope is that she entered upon literary work to win bread when she was over fifty years of age. Her husband was a lawyer who had not been successful and was in poor health. They had six children, none of whom could add to the scant income. Mrs. Trollope took to writing, gained financial success with the first volume, and continued to write until far advanced in years. She was the mother of Anthony Trollope and Thomas Adolphus Trollope who became noted authors.
IW note: Trollope’s anti-slavery novel Jonathan Jefferson Whitlaw is said to have influenced Harriet Beecher Stowe, who would later write Uncle Tom’s Cabin.