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Domestic Manners of the Americans (Penguin Classics)
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Product Description
Product Description
When Fanny Trollope set sail for America in 1827 with hopes of joining a Utopian community of emancipated slaves, she took with her three of her children and a young French artist, leaving behind her son Anthony, growing debts and a husband going slowly mad from mercury poisoning. But what followed was a tragicomedy of illness, scandal and failed business ventures. Nevertheless, on her return to England Fanny turned her misfortunes into a remarkable book. A masterpiece of nineteenth-century travel-writing, Domestic Manners of the Americans is a vivid and hugely witty satirical account of a nation and was a sensation on both sides of the Atlantic.
Book Description
Frances Trollope presents an engaging account of her visit to the United States during 1827–1831 in this two-volume travelogue. Published in 1832, it records her often outspoken views on many aspects of nineteenth-century American society. The immediacy of her impressions will arouse the curiosity of readers today.
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On the 4th of November, 1827, I sailed from London, accompanied by my son and two daughters; and after a favorable, though somewhat tedious voyage, arrived on Christmas-day at the mouth of the Mississippi. Read the first page
Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Back Cover
On the 4th of November, 1827, I sailed from London, accompanied by my son and two daughters; and after a favorable, though somewhat tedious voyage, arrived on Christmas-day at the mouth of the Mississippi. Read the first page
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
A fascinating travel book written by Anthony Trollope's mother, who went initially to America to escape debts and a difficult marriage. Fanny wasn't very complimentary about the manners of the Americans she met, particularly the men, but, like all good travel books, it conjures up an evocative picture of what it was like to be in that place at that particular time.
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
This book is superb. A frank if somewhat biased view of Americans between 1828 and 1831 from New Orleans to New York. There is very little Fanny Trollope does not touch on, describing natural scenery, raw progress, family customs and personal habits. She experienced and examined religious beliefs and customs and comments on them with asperity but her particular aim is to describe the American character. She is scornful of the effect and consequences of the Declaration of Independence on the national type and disgusted by American hypocrisy.
However while critical she is generous in acknowledging the friendship she was offered and shares her enjoyment of new experiences and grand scenery. This book is everything I was expecting: witty, intelligent and not unkind.
However while critical she is generous in acknowledging the friendship she was offered and shares her enjoyment of new experiences and grand scenery. This book is everything I was expecting: witty, intelligent and not unkind.
10 of 12 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
Though it's been 170 years since Frances Trollope visited the fledgling United States, most of what she wrote still applies; the American character does not appear to have changed all that much in the intervening centuries. As a sophisticated, somewhat snobbish Englishwoman, Trollope appreciated the American virtues, such as they were, but had little patience with many American customs. These included a pervasive obsession with money and a callous indiference towards the cruelty of slavery. More than anything, however, this book is a pleasure to read, elegantly written and lucidly expressed. Only quotes can do her justice: "All the freedom that is enjoyed in America, beyond what is enjoyed in England, is enjoyed solely by the disorderly at the expense of the orderly."
"It is not among the higher classes that the possession of slaves produces the worst effects. Among the poorer class of landholders, who are often as profoundly ignorant as the negroes they own, the effect of this plenary power over males and females is most demoralising; and the kind of coarse, not to say brutal, authority which is exercised, furnishes the most disgusting moral spectacle I ever witnessed."
"The first book I bought in America was The Chronicles of the Canongate. On asking the price, I was agreeably surprised to hear a dollar and a half named, being about one-sixth of what I used to pay for its fellows in England; but on opening the grim pages, it was long before I could again call them cheap. To be sure, the pleasure of a bright well-printed page ought to be quite lost sight of in the glowing, galloping, bewitching course that the imagination sets out upon with a new Waverly novel; ant so it was with me till I felt the want of it; and then I am almost ashamed to confess how often, in turning the thin dusky pages, my poor earth-born spirit paused in its pleasure, to sigh for hot-pressed wire-wove."
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Most Recent Customer Reviews
Interesting perspective on early days of the U.S.
This cheerfully impertinent book is a travel diary of Frances Trollope, mother of the novelist Anthony Trollope, during her travels in the United States in the late 1820s. Read more
Published 5 months ago by Alessandra Kelley
American Frontier Life Critically Viewed
In the 1820s and 30s, with the transatlantic transportation becoming gradually accessible, European visitors to the US including British writers increased in number. Read more
Published 12 months ago by nao
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