Frances Trollope

Who was Frances Trollope?

Frances Milton Trollope was an English novelist and writer who published as Mrs. Trollope or Mrs. Frances Trollope. Her first book, Domestic Manners of the Americans has been the best known, but she also published strong social novels: an anti-slavery novel said to influence the work of the American Harriet Beecher Stowe, the first industrial novel, and two anti-Catholic novels that used a Protestant position to examine self-making.

Recent scholars note that modernist critics tended to exclude women writers such as Frances Trollope from serious consideration. Her detractors familiarly called her by the diminutive Fanny Trollope, considered slightly vulgar, and discounted her prolific production.

Her first and third sons, Thomas Adolphus and Anthony, also became writers; Anthony Trollope became respected for his social novels.