Fanny Trollope

Fanny Trollope was born in Bristol in 1779 and at 29 married Thomas and over the years bore him seven children (one died at birth). One of those children was Anthony Trollope. This might easily have been the only reason for interest in her. However, Fanny Trollope was the author of over 30 novels in her own right and was, in her day, an enormous bestseller. She turned her pen to many controversial subjects, including slavery in the USA and in the Industrial Revolution in Manchester, and her best known work, the domestic manners of the Americans, at the time earned her a reputation as unlady-like. Her husband suffered from chronic headaches, probably exacerbated by mercury-based drugs which were given to him but which contributed to his black moods. With a husband who could not support the family, and after the death of her third son Arthur of TB, she set off from Harrow, leaving her husband and two sons behind her, for Tennessee with her three remaining children and a French artist to join a Utopian community there. This experience was the subject of her first book which was a critical and financial success. Three successful books followed in the next two years but, in 1834, the family was bankrupt and they moved to Brussels where her husband and another son died -- the latter again of TB which was subsequently to kill two more of her children.