“I DO NOT LIKE THEM. I DO NOT LIKE THEIR PRINCIPLES, I DO NOT LIKE THEIR MANNERS, I DO NOT LIKE THEIR OPINIONS”: FIRST AMERICAN EDITION OF FRANCES TROLLOPE’S DOMESTIC MANNERS OF THE AMERICANS, 1832

TROLLOPE, Frances. Domestic Manners of the Americans. New York: Whittaker, Treacher, 1832. Octavo, later full brown mottled calf, elaborately gilt-decorated spine, black morocco spine label. $950.

First American edition of Mrs. Trollope’s acerbic portrait of the Jacksonian United States, which amused British readers and angered American ones, illustrated with 8 lithographic plates.

"Anthony Trollope came naturally by the novelist's trade… for his mother was a prolific writer" (Baugh et al., 1361). Frances Trollope observed the American scene from southern Mississippi to the mid-Atlantic states of Pennsylvania and New York, producing this "highly censorious report on American manners, which caused a furor in the sensitive United States of the early 19th century" (Kunitz & Haycraft, 632). This first American edition, published the same year as the first edition, includes a scathing preface "by the American Editor" that argues that the work cannot be by an English lady, presenting as evidence "the entire absence of all the characteristics of female writing… a total want of delicacy in style and sentiment… a coarse disregard of all those nice decorums which are sacred in the eyes of a well-bred lady" and "a flippant ignorance of genteel life." Instead, the editor suggests (incorrectly) that the work is by Basil Hall, whose 1829 account of his travels in North America had similarly incensed American readers. Nevertheless, Domestic Manners of the Americans remains an acknowledged masterpiece of the era's travel writing as well as a timeless commentary scrutinizing a society torn between "high ideals and human frailties." Sabin 97028. Howes T357. Rich II:239-40. Lowndes, 2712. Allibone, 2455. Small bookplate.

Some plates with moderate foxing, joints and spine ends a bit rubbed. A handsome volume.