While I was
whirling away in all my Mary-research, I read a bit about and by Frances “Fanny” Milton
Trollope, including the 1997 biography Fanny
Trollope: The Life and Adventures of a Clever Woman.[1] My
notes remind me that I read that book in the middle of September 1999 (a couple
of years into my research), and as I page through the volume now, I am stunned
to see how much Trollope wrote in such a short time. Forty-one books between
1832 and 1856. Just twenty-four years.
Equally
astonishing: Born in 1780, she did not publish her first volume until she was
in her fifty-second year. Novels and travel books were her favorite (especially
the former), and among her novels was The
Life and Adventures of Jonathan Jefferson Whitlaw; or Scenes on the Mississippi,
1836, now credited with being perhaps the first anti-slavery novel—as well as
an influence on Harriet Beecher Stowe.
I’ve not read
this novel, and, as I look online today (June 22, 2016), I see that there are available
only print-on-demand editions—or some very
expensive originals (she published the novel, as was the custom then, in three
volumes). I’m going to have to pony up for something
because I want to read that novel. (I
just now checked: I can get it online—it’s been digitized by Google.)
I did read one of Fanny Trollope’s books,
however—her first one, Domestic Manners
of the Americans, 1832—a book that propelled her into an almost immediate
celebrity and (on our side of the pond) notoriety. She had traveled to America,
where, to say the least, she was generally not
impressed with many of us—or with our ways.
[1] Neville-Singleton, Pamela,
(New York: Viking). 1st American edition was 1998, which is the one
I read.
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