Domestic Manners of the Americans

''Domestic Manners of the Americans'' is a two-volume travel book by Frances Milton Trollope, published in 1832, which follows her travels through America and her residence in Cincinnati, at the time still a frontier town.

Context

Frances Trollope travelled to the U.S. with her son Henry, "having been partly instigated by the social and communistic ideas of a lady whom I well remember, a certain Miss Wright, who was, I think, the first of the American female lecturers" (Anthony Trollope, ''An Autobiography''). She briefly stayed at the Nashoba Commune, a utopian settlement for ex-slaves set up by Frances Wright in Tennessee, but was dismayed by the primitive conditions.

It had been only 15 years since the United Kingdom was at war with the United States and the earlier American Revolutionary War was still remembered. Trollope's own views on government contrasted with American-style republicanism. According to Katherine Moore, while in America, Trollope was unhappy as a result of financial and marital difficulties.

Trollope's analysis of the USA

The book created a sensation on both sides of the Atlantic, as Frances Trollope had a caustic view of the Americans and found America strongly lacking in manners and learning. She was appalled by America's egalitarian middle-class and by the influence of evangelicalism that was emerging during the Second Great Awakening. Trollope was also harshly critical of slavery of African Americans in the United States, and by the popularity of tobacco chewing, and the consequent spitting, even on carpets.

After seeing much of what the United States had to offer, her overall impression was not favourable. At the end of the book, she tried to summarise what she found wrong in the American character:

Reactions

The book was both highly controversial and highly successful, selling "like wildfire". It also enabled its author to become a wage-earner and save her family from penury. American author Mark Twain was amused and impressed by Trollope's observations of the Antebellum frontier America he grew up in: "Mrs Trollope was so handsomely cursed and reviled by this nation ortelling the truth...she was painting a state of things which did not change at once...I remember it."

''The Quarterly Review'' praised Trollope's humour and descriptive skill:

According to Katherine Moore (writing in 1985), Trollope "had no profundity of thought...but she had a seeing eye and a lively pen". Her descriptions are "never boring: she makes us see the lonely clearings and farms, the huge silent rivers, Niagara, untamed and unvulgarised, the clear bright air ..."

In a 1836 letter to the Ministry of War, Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna quoted Trollope as an anti-slavery intellectual whose example must be followed.

See also

* How to Observe Morals and Manners

References

External links

Vanity Fair - Mrs. Trollope's America

Full etext
at Project Gutenberg
*

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1832 non-fiction books
Anti-Americanism
Books about the United States
British non-fiction books
American travel books