North America Book

Trollope's observations on American society a hundred years ago (of which this volume is a shortened version) have long been out of print. His mother had written a book which castigated the crudity of American manners: thirty years later, when Trollope hoped to make restitution, the American Civil War had broken out. His sympathies were with the North and, though shocked by 'the purposely herd of uncouth democracy', he could always detect the romance underlying the vulgar surface and comprehend the ebullient American pride in equality. Never looking down on what he saw, but looking at it, Anthony Trollope was admirably equipped to observe American (or any other) culture intelligently and sympathetically: and he was deeply conscious that in America lay the seeds of the future world.