Domestic Manners of the Americans

Published in 1832 after a failed attempt to settle in the United States, this travel book records Frances Trollope's years in Cincinnati and her journeys through the Ohio and Mississippi valleys and the eastern cities. She describes steamboats, boarding houses, revival meetings, the slave states, and what she takes to be American habits at table, in conversation, and in public: tobacco, boasts of equality, and a thinness of amusement. The tone is satirical and comparative, measuring the republic against English notions of comfort and civility. It is a social travelogue, not a political treatise or a novel, and it stays with manners rather than with constitutions.

Quarter bound in grey-blue cloth with grey paper boards printed with a red pattern. Map endleaves printed dark red on grey. Dark red slipcase. Page tops stained red.