Domestic Manners of the Americans is an entertaining, witty, and often scathing account of Trollope's travels in America between 1827 and 1832 and her criticisms of American manners, from vulgarity to the treatment of slaves. One of the most influential travel books of the century, it also speaks to political debates on equality in England.

Frances Trollope (1780-1863) wrote her first book, Domestic Manners, at the age of 53 and went on to write over forty more after its phenomenal success. She travelled to America to assist in the founding of a utopian community in the face of financial ruin in England, and after several failed business ventures began to gather material for her travel book. She supported six children after the death of her husband, one of whom, Anthony Trollope, followed her into writing.
Elsie B. Michie is Professor of English at Louisiana State University. Her books include Outside the Pale: Cultural Exclusion, Gender Difference, and the Victorian Woman Writer (1993) and The Vulgar Question of Money: Heiresses, Materialism, and the Novel of Manners from Jane Austen to Henry James (2011). She has edited a Frances Trollope novel, The Lottery of Marriage (2011), complied the Oxford On-Line Bibliography for Frances Trollope, and published essays on Trollope in Partial Answers and Women's Writing.