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Ard, Patricia M. "Charles Dickens and Frances Trollope: Victorian Kindred Spirits in the American Wilderness." American Transcendental Quarterly 7.4 (1993): 293-306.
Ard links the nature of Trollope's and Dickens's accounts of America together because of their inability to let go of their "Victorian preconceptions which precluded their seeing American nature fresh and caused them, instead, to desire another England in America and to view American landscape with horror" (294). Both Trollope and Dickens write about the natural aspects of the Mississippi River and Niagara Falls and their disapproving descriptions are in reference to both the landscape and the inhabitants. The two authors are also very disturbed by their lack of privacy in nature: "they chastise nature in America both for its vastness and, at the same time, for its lack of privacy, seemingly contradictory perspectives" (299). Their disdain for the landscape in America, as a response from their ideals in England, turned into a similar sentiment for the people in America.
Berger, Max. The British Traveller in America, 1836-1860. New York: Columbia UP, 1943.
Clark, Jennifer. “Poisoned Pens: The Anglo-American Relationship and the Paper War.” Symbiosis: A Journal of Anglo-American Literary Relations 6 (2002): 45-68.
"It is the aim of this essay to discuss the literature of the Paper War [1810, hot and heavy 1815-1819, over 1834] as evidence of the problematic trans-Atlantic relationship after independence. I want to suggest that American writers in this discourse neither fully understood the cultural ramificiations of the reorganized British Empire nor the domestic political agenda of their English critics. What they did see was a need to defend America and express an emergent and confused nationalism that still retained unresolved attachments to the familial relationship."
Eaton, Joseph, "From Anglophile to Nationalist: Robert Walsh's An Appeal from the Judgments of Great Britain." Pennsylvania Magazine of History & Biography 132:2 (2008): 141-71.
Though originally an Anglophile and Federalist, "Walsh earned the praise of prominent Federalists and Republicans alike" for his skill "producing a carefully crafted work of cohesive nationalism that made the Appeal the most widely acclaimed nonfiction nationalistic work to appear in the years after the War of 1812." "Walsh deftly navigated through the problematic features of American identity, most notably slavery. . . . Walsh's work was less an ‘appeal’ than a declaration of total war, extreme in its protest against British writers' treatment of America. The longest section of the Appeal was the last, Walsh's 120-page treatment of American slavery." He "provided a defense in relative terms, pointing to the abasement of various categories of Britons and British colonials: West Indian slaves, English factory workers, Irish Catholics, and Indians on the Subcontinent. Adopting a Virginia perspective, which absolved American republicanism from incrimination, Walsh blamed the slave trade, and essentially slavery itself, on Britain."
Eldridge, Herbert G. "The Paper War between England and America: The Inchiquin Episode." American Studies 16 (1982): 49-68.
Ellis, Linda Abess. Frances Trollope's America. New York: Peter Lang; 1993.
Haynes, Sam W. "What Do You Think of Our Country?" Unfinished Revolution: The Early American Republic in a British World. Charlottesville: U of Virginia P, 2010. 24-50.
Haynes explains how the formation of America as its own unique country cannot be separated from its relations with Britain during and after the Revolution: "the American relationship with Great Britain helps to remind us that the process by which nation states in the early stages of development arrive at coherent self-image rarely occurs in isolation" (2). Although territorially free from Britain, America was still deeply concerned about their opinion of the new Republic and took their insults very sensitively as they were having a hard time finding their own identity. The initial years of the new country saw amicable relations with Great Britain, but these kind relations quickly turned sour in the 1820s coinciding with a proliferation of negative and condescending written accounts of America by British authors -- "travel books" (28). Anti-British sentiment, stemming from travel books, and expanding way beyond, began to unite a country with geographic and ideological differences. Americans began forming a national identity because regions were able to set aside confrontational ideologies, such as slavery, and defend the nation as whole.
Heineman, Helen K. Three Victorians in the New World: Interpretations of the New World in the Works of Frances Trollope, Charles Dickens, and Anthony Trollope. New York: Peter Lang, 1992.
Heineman, Helen. "'Starving in that Land of Plenty': New Backgrounds to Frances Trollope's Domestic Manners of the Americans." American Quarterly 24.5 (1972): 643-60.
Trollope's motivation to journey to America is often thought to solely be a commercial venture in which she intended to sell European goods in Cincinnati and reclaim her family fortune while writing her book. However, many fail to see that her original intent was to join Frances Wright in creating her utopian society and use this as a way to hide the family's increasingly poor financial situation. Trollop intended to stay in Nashoba, not create a business in Cincinnati as commonly thought; however, upon her arrival she made the decision to leave within ten days. Trollope's failure in Cincinnati sent her further east, and although she was taking notes during this time, she had no real intent on writing a book. Inspired by Basil Hall's work, Trollope saw the opportunity to write a book in which she could write about a woman's experience in America and delay facing her English friends and her failed mission.
Heineman, Helen. "Frances Trollope in the New World: Domestic Manners of the Americans." American Quarterly 21.3 (1969): 544-59.
Trollope's account of America differs from many other British travelers' novels. Trollope was not a visitor writing what she saw; Trollope spent four years living and working with and amongst Americans. The style of her book makes it truly unique with its keen details, personal anecdotes, and unfriendly tone. "While Mrs. Trollope's intensely personal focus is her greatest strength, it is also the source of her greatest weakness," because she can turn a specific encounter into an all-encompassing American manner (555). It is also clear that there is a divide in her book, where in the beginning when she was in Cincinnati and had no intention of writing a travel book, her style was much more personal than later in her eastward travels when she consciously wrote with a more conventional style, knowing that she now wanted to publish her own travel book.
Lougy, Robert E. "Nationalism and Violence: America in Charles Dickens's Martin Chuzzlewit." Dickens and the Children of Empire Ed. Wendy S. Jacobson. New York: Palgrave, 2000. 105-15.
Mason, Matthew. "The Battle of the Slaveholding Liberators: Great Britain, the United States, and Slavery in the Early Nineteenth Century." William and Mary Quarterly 59.3 (2002): 665-96.
During the War of 1812, when both America and Britain claimed to be the great Liberators of the world, slavery became the central issue, because for both nations "disputes over slavery and national identity were mutually reinforcing and inextricably linked" (667). The dispute all surrounded America's refusal to allow the British to search their sea vessels. A measure the British thought would put an end to the slave trade was seen as a sign of Americans "being sympathetic to the African slave trade" (671). Attacking the British accusations, Americans compared the trafficking of Africans to the British seizing Americans at sea as a form of servitude. America was divided in defense of itself, some blaming the British for initially introducing African slavery into the country and arguing that they were now forced to "mitigate an evil they could not eradicate," while sectionalists placed the blame solely on the South, and abolitionists saw this as a time to end slavery for good.
Mesick, Jane Louise. The English Traveler in America: 1785-1835. New York: Columbia UP, 1922.
Moss, Sidney P. Charles Dickens' Quarrel with America. Troy: Whitston, 1984.
Moss, Sidney P., and Carolyn Moss. "The Jefferson Miscegenation Legend in British Travel Books." Journal of the Early Republic 7.3 (1987): 253-74.
The Jefferson and Hemings affair is questioned as the authors explain how British writers were guilty of exaggerating facts, creating rumors, and competing to "outdo their predecessors in scandal" (253). James Callender, who is known for writing truths and lies, was the first to publish the story of Jefferson that so many British writers were keen to comment on. Many famous British authors are addressed in this piece, and many are criticized for elaborating details and falsely assuming things as "facts." Jefferson was an easy target for British criticism because of the hypocrisy of what he preached and what he practiced, but Hemings was just a way to add excitement to "the Jefferson miscegenation story," which is "a good example of modern legend" (274).
Mulvey, Christopher. Anglo-American Landscapes: A Study of 19th century Anglo-American Travel Literature. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1983.
Mulvey, Christopher. Transatlantic Manners: Social Patterns in Nineteenth-century Anglo-American Travel Literature. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1990.
Nevins, Allan. American Social History as Recorded by British Travellers. New York: Holt, 1923.
Nibet, Ada B. British Comment on the United States: A Chronological Bibliography, 1832-1919. Berkeley: U of California P, 2001.
Worth, Tim. "'An Extraordinary Species of Tyranny': Fanny Trollope and the Domestic Manners of the Americans." Symbiosis 5.1 (2001): 17-32.
Worth addresses Trollope's account of America and how a woman seeing such few aspects of a country and having spent little time there must compensate for her failure by creating a book that enthralls readers and gives her authority over the subject matter. Trollope's book tries to factually compare the uncomfortable and dangerous perceptions English have of America to the idealized version of English society. Upon her arrival, Trollope's disdain for America's physical aspects foreshadows the attitude that makes up her entire work and creates a contrast between the harshness of America and the falsely glorified England.