Fanny: A Fiction

Description

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.

Edmund White's novels include A Boy's Own Story, Farewell Symphony and A Married Man. A well-known critic, he is also the author of an acclaimed biography of Jean Genet. After living in Paris for many years, he is now settled in New York, and teaches at Princeton University.

Wonderfully eccentric...Never less than convincing...Brilliant * Daily Mail * Bold and brilliant...Instructive, provocative, funny, poignant and timely...Combines such exuberant invention with such informed historical insight * Guardian *