Trollope, Frances (1780–1863)

English novelist. Her critical and witty Domestic Manners of the Americans (1832), the product of a three year stay in the USA, was much resented there. Author of 115 novels, her most successful were The Vicar of Wrexhill (1837) and The Widow Barnaby (1839), with its sequel The Widow Married (1840). Her son was the writer Anthony Trollope.

Trollope was born in Stapleton, Avon. In 1809 she married Thomas Anthony Trollope (1774–1835), a failed barrister and fellow of New College, Oxford. In 1827 her husband fell into financial difficulties, which were not relieved by moving to the USA. Widowed in 1835, she travelled widely on the Continent, writing articles and fiction, and eventually settled in Florence in 1843.