Frances Trollope, without a doubt, was the most provocative writer of the early Victorian period. Since then, unfortunately and inappropriately, she has been relegated to a paltry footnote in literary history as simply the mother of Anthony Trollope. However, many of her forty-one books impelled significant social change and greatly influenced the writers who came after her. As several scholars have argued, The Life and Adventures of Jonathan Jefferson Whitlaw: or Scenes on the Mississippi (1836) was a major contributing influence on Harriet Beecher Stowe’s writing Uncle Tom’s Cabin (1852), the book “that started this great war”, so President Lincoln reportedly said. In Britain shortly after Trollope’s novel appeared, the Jamaica Act was passed, setting free all slaves in the British colonies. The Life and Adventures of Michael Armstrong, the Factory Boy (1840), with its...
2017 words
Citation: Ayres, Brenda. "Frances Trollope". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 13 February 2006 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/speople.php?rec=true&UID=4458, accessed 05 December 2025.]
