A Short Biographical Dictionary of English Literature/Trollope, Mrs. Frances
Trollope, Mrs. Frances (Milton) (1780-1863).— Novelist and miscellaneous writer, b. at Stapleton near Bristol, m. (Milton) in 1809 Thomas A. T., a barrister, who fell into financial misfortune. She then in 1827 went with her family to Cincinnati, where the efforts which she made to support herself were unsuccessful. On her return to England, however, she brought herself into notice by publishing Domestic Manners of the Americans (1832), in which she gave a very unfavourable and grossly exaggerated account of the subject; and a novel, The Refugee in America, pursued it on similar lines. Next came The Abbess and Belgium and Western Germany, and other works of the same kind on Paris and the Parisians, and Vienna and the Austrians followed. Thereafter she continued to pour forth novels and books on miscellaneous subjects, writing in all over 100 vols. Though possessed of considerable powers of observation and a sharp and caustic wit, such an output was fatal to permanent literary success, and none of her books are now read. She spent the last 20 years of her life at Florence, where she d. in 1863. Her third s. was Anthony T., the well-known novelist (q.v.). Her eldest s., Thomas Adolphus Trollope, wrote The Girlhood of Catherine de Medici, a History of Florence, and Life of Pius IX., and some novels.