Women’s Writing in the British Isles from the Beginnings to the Present
Frances Trollope
-
Standard Name: Trollope, Frances
Birth Name: Frances Milton
Nickname: Fanny
Married Name: Frances Trollope
Frances Trollope
is best known for her novels and travel writing about early nineteenth-century America. She was also known for her outspoken social reform novels, and for her depictions of independent, intelligent, vulgar and manipulative women—often unmarried or widowed—who scheme intellectually-inferior men out of money and into marriage. FT
was herself known as blunt, intelligent, and witty; her writing reflects these traits, her Tory politics, and her advocacy for slaves, women, and the poor. She often introduced current witticisms and colloquialisms into her prose. Although she began writing only in her early fifties, she published thirty-four novels, six travel books, two long narrative poems, several verse dramas, scripts for home theatricals and many periodical contributions over a span of thirty years.
Houghton, Walter E., and Jean Harris Slingerland, editors. The Wellesley Index to Victorian Periodicals 1824-1900. University of Toronto Press.
Button, Marilyn D. “Reclaiming Mrs. Frances Trollope: British Abolitionist and Feminist”. College Language Association Journal, Vol.
28
, No. 1, pp. 69-86.
69
Nadel, Ira Bruce, and William E. Fredeman, editors. Dictionary of Literary Biography 21. Gale Research.
When Thackeray
published his Paris Sketch-Book in 1840, he self-consciously distanced himself from what he called the tea-party prattle of Morgan and Frances Trollope
(in Paris and the Parisians, 1836).
Jay, Elisabeth. “British Writers and Paris, 1840-1871: a research project in outline”. English Now: Selected Papers from the 20th IAUPE Conference in Lund 2007, edited by Marianne Thormählen, Lund University, pp. 110-17.
111
Literary responses
Sydney Owenson, Lady Morgan
Thackeray
(associating Morgan in his comments with Frances Trollope
) said the cultural judgements in this book were based on nothing but tea-table gossip.
McMaster, Rowland D. Thackeray’s Cultural Frame of Reference: Allusion in The Newcomes. McGill-Queen’s University Press.
124
Publishing
Harriet Taylor
HT
's reviews include an appraisal of Sarah Austin
's translation Tour of a German Prince, which appeared in May 1832.
Taylor, Harriet. The Complete Works of Harriet Taylor Mill. Editors Jacobs, Jo Ellen and Paula Harms Payne, Indiana University Press.
179n39
Hayek, Friedrich Augustus von et al. John Stuart Mill and Harriet Taylor; Their Correspondence [i.e. Friendship] and Subsequent Marriage. University of Chicago Press.
40
A harsh review of Frances Trollope
's Domestic Manners of the...
Theme or Topic Treated in Text
Flora Tristan
One chapter, entitled English Women, criticizes British social systems, and details the consequences women suffer because of the indissolubility of marriage.
Tristan, Flora. Flora Tristan’s London Journal, 1840. Translators Palmer, Dennis and Giselle Pincetl, Charles River Books.
His mother, Frances (Milton) Trollope
was a prolific novelist, whose writing became the chief support of her family.
Matthew, Henry Colin Gray et al., editors. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. http://www.oxforddnb.com/.
Reception
Anthony Trollope
Helen Heineman
, biographer of AT
's mother, argues that his vibrant, robust, and complex female characters and the way their predicament as women is presented, all owe their being to Frances Trollope
's literary...
Textual Production
Frances Eleanor Trollope
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
Friends, Associates
Frances Eleanor Trollope
In addition to her supportive professional relationship with her husband, FET
was also close to other writers such as Charles Dickens
, her brother-in-law Anthony Trollope
, her mother-in-law Frances Trollope
, and George Eliot
Literary responses
Frances Eleanor Trollope
The Athenæum lauded FET
's family knack of investing commonplace life with dramatic interest,
Athenæum. J. Lection.
2514 (1876): 18
no doubt referring to her mother-in-law Frances Trollope
, and the latter's son, Anthony Trollope
.
Family and Intimate relationships
Joanna Trollope
The novelists Frances Trollope
and her far more famous son Anthony Trollope
were collateral but not direct ancestors of JT
. She has praised them both warmly in print, perhaps more for their personal qualities...
Theme or Topic Treated in Text
Joanna Trollope
JT
's introduction to an edition of her ancestor Anthony Trollope
's autobiography, 1987 (reproduced in condensed form on her website), remarks that Frances Trollopein the end saved the family finances by her own...
Literary responses
Ellen Wood
Within a few years EW
's popularity had decidedly waned. Margaret Oliphant
in The Victorian Age of English Literature found nothing to say about Wood beyond that fact that her works sold by the fifty...
Travel
Frances Wright
FW
and Frances Trollope
sailed from England for America, heading for Wright's colony of Nashoba.
Eckhardt, Celia Morris. Fanny Wright. Harvard University Press.
Eckhardt, Celia Morris. Fanny Wright. Harvard University Press.
30, 33
During her time in...
Friends, Associates
Frances Wright
On her voyage back to Europe, FW
had as companion Robert Owen
's son, Robert Dale Owen
. During her stay in Europe, she made the acquaintance of Mary Shelley
(who became a friend and...
