Frances Trollope’s Domestic Manners of the Americans, complemented by Auguste Hervieu’s satiric illustrations, took the transatlantic world by storm in 1832. An unusual combination of realism, visual satire, and novelistic detail, Domestic Manners recounts Trollope’s three years as an Englishwoman living in America. Trollope makes the civility of an entire nation the subject of her keen scrutiny, a strategy that would earn her, in the words of the critic Michael Sadleir, “more anger and applause than almost any writer of her day.”
Auguste Hervieu’s twenty-four original illustrations, placed and scaled as in the first edition, are included in this Broadview Edition, inviting readers to experience the original relationship of image and text.
Comments
“Frances Trollope’s Domestic Manners of the Americans was a huge transatlantic sensation when it was first published in 1832. In it, Trollope used the cover of travel narrative to offer a not-always sympathetic portrait of the young United States that was brash, extreme, and more than a little naïve. Trollope published Domestic Manners at the age of 53, and it has come to stand for the entirety of her work, but this was far from the case. Thanks to Sara R. Danger’s painstaking editorial work in this volume and her insightful observations about transatlantic relations, Jacksonian America, early Victorian England, and Trollope herself, this new edition is a vital contribution that establishes the socio-cultural significance of both a woman and her times.” — Brenda Weber, Indiana University Bloomington
“Scholars, teachers, and students alike rely on Broadview’s ability to reframe familiar classics and recover neglected works, and Sara R. Danger upholds this tradition in her edition of Domestic Manners of the Americans. Though Domestic Manners was intended for her British audience ‘at home,’ Trollope’s unflattering caricatures so riled the American public that her book created a transatlantic publishing phenomenon. This new edition reminds us why Charles Dickens called the book ‘one of the great pioneer exercises in transatlantic disparagement,’ and offers readers a feast of Anglophone print culture.” — Pamela Corpron Parker, Whitworth University
Acknowledgements
Introduction
Frances Milton Trollope: A Brief Chronology
A Note on the Text
Domestic Manners of the Americans
Appendix A: Related Texts by Frances Trollope
- Preface to the Fifth Edition of Domestic Manners of the Americans (1839)
- Unpublished Preface from the Rough Draft of Domestic Manners of the Americans
- A Statement on Auguste Hervieu from a Letter to Mary Russell Mitford (27 April 1827)
- Three Statements on the Composition and Publication of Domestic Manners of the Americans
- From a Letter to Mary Russell Mitford (28 July 1830)
- From a Letter to Julia Garnett Pertz (18 April 1831)
- From a Letter to Julia Garnett Pertz (27 June 1832)
Appendix B: Related Documents from Cincinnati, Ohio, 1828-31
- From “The Invisible Girl,” The Cincinnati Gazette (12 April 1828)
- “View of Mrs. Trollope’s Bazaar,” Cincinnati Mirror (November 1833)
- From “THE BAZAAR,” Cincinnati Directory and Advertiser for 1829 (1829)
- “Bazaar,” The Cincinnati Gazette (23 November 1829)
- Auguste Hervieu, “A Card. To the Public of Cincinnati,” The Cincinnati Gazette (19 December 1829)
- From Timothy Flint, Review of General Lafayette’s Landing and Reception at Cincinnati, an Historical Painting, by Auguste Jean J. Hervieu, The Western Monthly Review (1830)
- Paintings by Auguste Hervieu Made during His Residency in Cincinnati, 1828-30
- Cupid at a Quaker Courtship (1830)
- Allegory: Knowledge vs. Orthodox Religion (1830)
- A Young Man with the Initials J.L.F. (c. 1830)
Appendix C: Contemporary Reviews of Domestic Manners of the Americans
- From The Quarterly Review (1832)
- From The Athenaeum (24 March 1832)
- From The Edinburgh Review (1832)
- From The Gentleman’s Magazine (1832)
- From The New Monthly Magazine (1832)
- From The Penny Magazine of the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge (1832)
- From The Literary Gazette (24 March 1832)
- From The American Quarterly Review (1832)
- From [Timothy Flint,] The Knickerbocker (1833)
- The New Monthly Magazine (1832)
Appendix D: Responses and Satire
- The Trollope Family, from a sketch taken from life, made in Cincinnati in 1829 (1832)
- “Miscellanea—Mrs. Trollope,” Review of Childs and Inman’s “The Trollope Family,” The Athenæum (10 November 1832)
- Nimrod Fish, Mrs. Trollop’s Quick Step (1837)
- From [Frederick William Shelton,] The Trollopiad, or, Travelling Gentlemen in America (1837)
- From David Claypoole Johnston, “Trollopania,” Scraps (1833)
Select Bibliography
Sara Danger is Associate Professor of English at Valparaiso University.
