Frances Eleanor Trollope

01 August 1835 - 14 August 1913

FET wrote upwards of fourteen Victorian novels as well as contributing to many periodicals. Much of her fiction is peopled by eccentric cosmopolitan Londoners, Italian and French visitors, and motherless, bright, and educated young women trying to carve out niches for themselves within the boundaries of the middle and upper-middle classes, with varying degrees of success. Her periodical submissions are predominantly travel writings which showcase her sustained interest in the art, culture, and history of Italy. She also translated plays and travel books from Italian and German, with her husband, Thomas Adolphus Trollope , serving as editor.

Milestones

August 1835

FET was born aboard a paddle steamer in Delaware Bay, USA; she was the eldest of a family of four, of whom three girls survived.

Matthew, Henry Colin Gray et al., editors. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. http://www.oxforddnb.com/.

under Ellen Lawless Ternan

Matthew, Henry Colin Gray et al., editors. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. http://www.oxforddnb.com/.

under Frances Eleanor Jarman

Stebbins, Lucy Poate, and Richard Poate Stebbins. The Trollopes. The Chronicle of a Writing Family. Columbia University Press.

234

By 25 August 1866

As A New Writer, Frances Eleanor Ternan (who became FET in October that year) published Aunt Margaret's Trouble, her first novel, and the only one not to bear her name.

Athenæum. J. Lection.

2026 (1866): 234

Terry, Reginald Charles, editor. Oxford Reader’s Companion to Trollope. Oxford University Press.

548

1895

FET published her last work, a biography of her mother-in-law, Frances Trollope : Her Life and Literary Work from George III to Victoria.

Terry, Reginald Charles, editor. Oxford Reader’s Companion to Trollope. Oxford University Press.

548

14 August 1913

FET died, aged nearly eighty, at Southsea near Portsmouth, where she had been living with her sister Ellen .

Matthew, Henry Colin Gray et al., editors. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. http://www.oxforddnb.com/.

under Ellen Lawless Ternan

Sutherland, John. The Stanford Companion to Victorian Fiction. Stanford University Press.

Biography

Birth and Family

August 1835

FET was born aboard a paddle steamer in Delaware Bay, USA; she was the eldest of a family of four, of whom three girls survived.

Matthew, Henry Colin Gray et al., editors. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. http://www.oxforddnb.com/.

under Ellen Lawless Ternan

Matthew, Henry Colin Gray et al., editors. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. http://www.oxforddnb.com/.

under Frances Eleanor Jarman

Stebbins, Lucy Poate, and Richard Poate Stebbins. The Trollopes. The Chronicle of a Writing Family. Columbia University Press.

234