Domestic Manners of the Americans: Free Audiobook and Listening Guide

Domestic Manners of the Americans, credited to Frances Trollope, is available as a LibriVox volunteer audiobook. This guide identifies the recording, its source summary and its audio tracks.

About the work

The LibriVox catalogue summary, preserved with the recording, reads:

LibriVox recording of Domestic Manners of the Americans, by Frances Trollope. Read by Nicholas Cifford. Next to de Alexis de Tocquville's almost contemporary Democracy in America, Frances Trollope's work may be the most famous (or at least notorious) dissection of manners and morals of the United States. The work was a sensation on both sides of the Atlantic, and particularly in America, where Trollope was reviled as representing the worst of old world prejudices the new republic (though the criticism did nothing to hurt sales). Accompanied by a son and two daughters, Trollope lived in the United States from 1827 to 1831, spending most of her time in Cincinnati, where she had hoped, when joined by her husband, to open a large department store, which was also to be a place of entertainment and culture. She was, unfortunately, almost entirely ignorant of business practices, and habitually short of money, which her husband was in no position to make up. After leaving Cincinnati she traveled briefly in the eastern states, before returning to England. There is something of a happy ending; Domestic Manners was her first book, and such a success that she turned to writing, producing in her lifetime over a hundred books, which, though they never made her very rich, were more than sufficient to keep the wolf from the door. She passed on her highly disciplined writing habits to her son Anthony (who had not accompanied her to the new world), who produced forty-seven novels as well as several other works. His views of the United States, thanks in part to its attractive young women, were, of course, more benign; indeed in The Duke's Children, the lovely New Yorker Isabel Boncassen is to become the Duchess of Omnium. It's worth remembering that Frances Trollope's introduction to America was made through what was still something of frontier territory in Ohio, and few historians would argue that refinement and high culture were outstanding features of the Jacksonian era, which she saw first hand. Though some at the time feared that Domestic Manners would lead to a new Anglo-American war, fortunately the critical disputes took place on paper. Eventually passions cooled, and some Americans even came to admit that some of her judgements were just. Mark Twain, for instance, while chiding Trollope for falling for American tall tales (see the story of the crocodile's -- or alligator's -- destruction of a family in Chapter III), also remarked that the reason Domestic Manners was so hated by patriotic Americans was because it was so true. In any case, it is offered by the reader as a contribution to the American political campaign of 2012. (Introduction by Nicholas Clifford)

Recording facts

• Recording title: Domestic Manners of the Americans
• Author credits: Frances Trollope
• Language: English
• Original MP3 tracks: 34
• Listed recording duration: 11:50:38

Catalogue topics

• nonfiction
• Travel
• America

Opening tracks: first 24 of 34

1. 01 - Chapter 1 — 7:28
2. 02 - Chapter 2 — 17:28
3. 03 - Chapter 3 — 26:48
4. 04 - Chapter 4 — 19:40
5. 05 - Chapter 5 — 15:40
6. 06 - Chapter 6 — 13:12
7. 07 - Chapter 7 — 18:21
8. 08 - Chapter 8 — 15:38
9. 09 - Chapter 9 — 21:27
10. 10 - Chapter 10 — 19:56
11. 11 - Chapter 11 — 13:27
12. 12 - Chapter 12 — 23:59
13. 13 - Chapter 13 — 23:18
14. 14 - Chapter 14 — 34:12
15. 15 - Chapter 15 — 16:07
16. 16 - Chapter 16 — 9:38
17. 17 - Chapter 17 — 16:52
18. 18 - Chapter 18 — 21:35
19. 19 - Chapter 19 — 19:02
20. 20 - Chapter 20 — 37:27
21. 21 - Chapter 21 — 7:42
22. 22 - Chapter 22 — 21:21
23. 23 - Chapter 23 — 14:17
24. 24 - Chapter 24 — 10:29

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Source and rights

This is a record from LibriVox's official Internet Archive collection, with a public-domain licence recorded in its metadata. LibriVox's policy includes its catalogue summaries as well as its recordings. Its public-domain assessment follows United States law; copyright status can differ elsewhere. The summary and track facts are reproduced and reformatted from that record. Dates attached to the archive upload are not treated as original book publication dates.