Domestic Manners of the Americanby Frances Trollope | |
| List(s): | "Carp 500" |
|---|---|
| Category: |
"Travel" |
| Pages: | 416 |
| Year of Publication: | 1832 |
| Date Read: | 05/16/2001 |
| Notes: | One of the best of the travel accounts of Jacksonian America. Mark Twain said of her writing: "Mrs. Trollope was so handsomely cursed and reviled by this nation [for] telling the truth ... She spoke in plain terms ... but honest and without malice ... She lived three years in this civilization of ours; in the body of it — not on the surface of it, as was the case with most of the foreign tourists of her day. She knew her subject well, and she set it forth fairly and squarely, without any weak ifs ands and buts. Nearly all the tourists were honest and fair; nearly all felt a sincere kindness for us; nearly all of them glossed us over a little too anxiously ... but Mrs. Trollope, alone of them all, dealt what the gamblers call a strictly 'square game.' She did not gild us; and neither did she whitewash us." COMMENTS — Frances Trollope was an Englishwoman who came with her husband to Cincinnati, Ohio, seeking to restore their distressed fortunes by opening an emporium for luxury imported goods. She was the mother of the prolific and still widely-read novelist Anthony Trollope, whose books dwelt on English politics, society and the civil service. |
| My Rating: | 8 |