The Widow and Wedlock Novels of Frances Trollope

General Editor: Brenda Ayres
Volume Editors: Ann-Barbara Graff, Abigail Burnham Bloom, Tamara S Wagner and Elsie B Michie

The Pickering Masters

4 Volume Set: 1760pp: 2011
978 1 84893 079 7: 234x156mm: £350.00/$625.00

The writings of Frances Trollope have been subject to increasing academic interest in recent years, and are now widely studied. In this four-volume critical edition her comical, yet subversive, treatment of Victorian marriage provides an interesting contrast to some of the more earnest but conventional fiction of the time. She believed that her books should deal with social issues, and influenced other writers such as Charles Dickens and Elizabeth Gaskell.

The novels included here are among her most successful although they have not previously been available in scholarly editions. Published between 1839 and 1849, they were written when Trollope was a widow herself. They are significant in their focus on more mature women and their social and sexual significance. The Widow Barnaby introduces the character of the widow, bringing this vulgar yet wholly credible figure to life. The Widow Married continues with the theme of marriage, and was to influence Trollope’s contemporaries, as well as her son, Anthony. The third and final book in the sequence, The Widow Wedded, draws directly on Trollope’s experiences in America, allowing her further commentary on social conditions and making this a useful counterpart to her best-known non-fiction work Domestic Manners of the Americans. Trollope saw first-hand the Nashoba commune for freed slaves, as well as living in Cincinnati for a time and involving herself in the town’s development. The Lottery of Marriage, while dominated by a romantic plot contains a significant subtext with both political and scientific elements. It has been out of print since 1862.

This set will include a general introduction, volume introductions, headnotes and endnotes. It will complement Pickering & Chatto’s previous collection, The Social Problem Novels of Frances Trollope (2008).