- Hardcover: 432 pages
- Publisher: Viking; 1st American Ed edition (6 Nov 1997)
- Language English
- ISBN-10: 0670859052
- ISBN-13: 978-0670859054
- Product Dimensions: 23.1 x 15.5 x 3.8 cm
- Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (1 customer review)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 1,649,835 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- See Complete Table of Contents
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More About the Author
Product Description
Product Description
Fanny Trollope was born in Bristol in 1779 and at 29 married Thomas and over the years bore him seven children (one died at birth). One of those children was Anthony Trollope. This might easily have been the only reason for interest in her. However, Fanny Trollope was the author of over 30 novels in her own right and was, in her day, an enormous bestseller. She turned her pen to many controversial subjects, including slavery in the USA and in the Industrial Revolution in Manchester, and her best known work, the domestic manners of the Americans, at the time earned her a reputation as unlady-like. Her husband suffered from chronic headaches, probably exacerbated by mercury-based drugs which were given to him but which contributed to his black moods. With a husband who could not support the family, and after the death of her third son Arthur of TB, she set off from Harrow, leaving her husband and two sons behind her, for Tennessee with her three remaining children and a French artist to join a Utopian community there. This experience was the subject of her first book which was a critical and financial success. Three successful books followed in the next two years but, in 1834, the family was bankrupt and they moved to Brussels where her husband and another son died - the latter again of TB which was subsequently to kill two more of her children.
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Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
Format:Paperback
This is one of my all-time favourite biographies. I have read and re-read it, every part of her life has something to offer and she was so prolific and nosy and interfering with all her family and so opinionated and so passionate about her causes that I just love her. The beauty of this book is that Fanny shines through and it is so well written that you feel as if you are reading a story, but it's all true. I love it.
Most Helpful Customer Reviews on Amazon.com (beta)
Amazon.com:
4 reviews
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful
The scent of dissertation is strong
21 April 2004
Format:Hardcover
A sturdy account of the life of an interesting and productive woman, now underestimated as a writer, is seriously marred by the scent of dissertation that hangs over it. Too often the best writing belongs to extended quotes from the subject's fiction presented as biographical facts. It reads very much like a dissertation on "Possible Parallels between the Life and Fiction of Fanny Trollope" with both the juicy bits of life and fiction, and the weasel words of academic caution omitted. I would have found some family trees of the tightly interlocking social circles Fanny Trollope moved in far more intriguing than the illustrations included.
poor
10 Dec 2009
Format:Hardcover|Amazon Verified Purchase
If your idea of a writer's biography is one that skimps over the writing, then this is your kind of book. It quotes almost nothing from Trollope's extensive writings (not even her letters--and she belonged to an age, mind you, when people revealed themselves in letters). Its three-sentence plot summaries of her numerous novels are as pointless as they are boring to read (you get more juicy details, and better writing, from the backs of any modern-day paperbacks). In fact, one feels, after reading this book, that its author wouldn't have cared if her subject had been a seamstress or a milliner instead; she would've managed to slog through nearly 400 pages of text anyway talking about everything else except those things that defined her subject.
Fact or Fiction?
22 Jan 2001
Format:Hardcover
This is one of those biographies in which the writer assumes that the subject's life is reflected in her fiction. It's a chore to separate the fictional quotations from the actual life. It's also one of those annoying biographies that is full of phrases like "She may have. . ." and "We may assume that she. . . ." When the biographer has no facts, she puts her subject into the contemporary scene and then suggests activities for her that she may or may not have engaged in. This method of writing biography is dreadfully out of date.
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