Trollope family

Biography

Frances Milton Trollope was born on March 10, 1780 in Stapleton, near Bristol, England; married barrister Thomas Anthony Trollope; they had seven children, including the writer Thomas Adolphus; Frances sailed to the U.S. in 1827, opening a store in Cincinnati, Ohio; the enterprise failed, and she returned to England in 1831; out of the experience came her best known work, The Domestic Manners of the Americans (1832); after the family became officially bankrupt, they moved to Bruges, Belgium in 1834, the father dying the following year; after returning to England and living in various places the next 10 years, Frances and Thomas Adolphus moved to Florence, Italy, where she wrote novels and travel books, including The Widow Barnaby (1839), The Widow Married (1840), and Petticoat Government (1850); Thomas Adolphus' published works include A Decade of Italian Women (1859), Durnton Abbey (1871), and What I Remember (1888); Frances died on October 6, 1863 in Florence, Italy, and Thomas Adolphus in 1892; Frances Eleanor Ternan married Thomas Adolphus in 1866, and cultivated a literary circle at the Villino Trollope in Florence.

Biographraphical Narrative

Mrs. Frances Eleanor Ternan was an actress well known by her maiden name of Fanny Jarman. Her three daughters were put on the stage at an early age, appearing in the lesser theatricals of the time. From this, each embarked on her own particular and interesting career. The eldest, Frances Eleanor, married Thomas Adolphus in 1866 after the death of his first wife, Theodosia Garrow, taking over the care of Beatrice (Bici), Thomas Adolphus' daughter, and the cultivation of a brilliant literary circle at the Villino Trollope in Florence. Maria Ternan, afterwards Mrs. W. Rowland Taylor, lived with her husband in Rome and became noted as artist, portrait painter, and news correspondent. The youngest, Ellen Lawless Ternan, formed a relationship with Charles Dickens, and according to Ada Nisbet, was his mistress for the last twelve years of his life. In 1876, she married the Rev. George Wharton Robinson, an Anglican clergyman who later gave up orders and established his own school at Margate in which he and his wife both taught. There were two children, Geoffrey Wharton Robinson, b. 1879, and Gladys Eleanor Wharton Robinson, b. 1885.

The relationship between the three Ternan sisters was warm and close, combining into one web the threads of three interesting lives, weaving together the names of Dickens, the Trollopes, as well as other prominent French, Italian, and English literary and political figures of the latter half of the 19th. century.

From the guide to the Trollope Family Papers, 1825-1915, (University of California, Los Angeles. Library. Department of Special Collections.)