A fictional biography of Fanny Wright written by Anthony Trollope’s mother, another Fanny, so combining the lives of the two women. A complete departure for White, this 19th-century romp around America, Haiti and Europe, with an amazing array of colourful characters, is written beautifully and with much wit.
In her fifties Fanny Trollope, mother of the novelist Anthony, became famous overnight for her book attacking the United States. Now, twenty-five years later, she sharpens her pen for her most controversial work yet: the biography of her old friend Frances Wright, the Scottish radical and feminist. Back in the 1820s the young Fanny Wright erupted into the Trollopes' sleepy English cottage like a volcano, her talk aflame with utopian ideals. Before long, Wright had convinced the older woman to follow her to America - a journey of extreme penury, frontier hardships and the most satisfying (and surprising) sensual romance of Fanny Trollope's life.
The 'biography soon degenerates into a settling of scores with Fanny Wright and wild digressions on the misadventures of Mrs Trollope's own family.
"Bold and brilliant...Instructive, provocative, funny, poignant and timely...Combines such exuberant invention with such informed historical insight" Guardian
"Wonderfully eccentric...Never less than convincing...Brilliant" Daily Mail
Author
About Edmund White
Edmund White was born in Cincinnati, Ohio in 1940. He teaches at Princeton University. He is an officer of the Ordre des Arts et Lettres.
