Domestic Manners of the Americas, by Fanny Trollope (Penguin, £8.99 in UK)

Fanny Trollope (nee Milton) was the mother of the novelist, but a remarkable woman and bona-fide authoress in her own right. When her husband's farming business failed she took three of her children (not Anthony) to America - first to Tennessee to found a utopian community, and later in Ohio. It was all rather disastrous, but when she went back to England she wrote and published this book (1832) which became a bestseller and launched her on a career in which she produced forty-odd books. She was a shrewd, open-eyed observer, interested in every facet of American life from cooking to politics, and though the work is a period piece it can still be read on its own merits.