Fanny Trollope

Has anybody ever read a book by or about Fanny? She sounds like an interesting person and I would like to give her a try one of these days...

I haven't read her novels, but I did read Domestic manners of the Americans, and a biography. I don't remember the name of the biography, but her life was incredibly fascinating. She was heroic in that she worked (writing) to support her family, and sufferred great poverty and the disappointment of a very unsuccessful husband, and the failure of his plans. She started a department store in (I think) Ohio and it was a spectacular failure. she got involved in a sort of communal utopian experiment with her artist companion (lover?). Her book about the Americans was very successful but insulting to the Americans. I would love to find some of her novels, although they aren't considered very good.

Jessie Phillips was re-released last year in paper, but other than that, I don't think any of her novels are in print.

I have the following in paperback:

The Widow Barnaby
The Three Cousins
Hargrave

The only one I have read (and this was some time ago) is The Widow Barnaby. I remember it feeling more frivolous and 18th century than Anthony Trollope's works.

I have been meaning to get back to reading her and Anthony for that matter.

Fanny seems to be one of those novelists who was enormously popular in her own time but whose novels now are almost never read except by academics. Georges Sand comes to mind in this category. Their fame rests on who they were and how they lived, not on the novels. Of course, unlike Sand, Fanny did write one nonfiction work that is still read today. I would guess, though, that had she not been Anthony's mother, Domestic Manners would have been less well-known.