Nineteenth century writers and reformers Frances Trollope and Frances Wright have always been viewed as ideological opposites. In Common Cause, The "Conservative" Frances Trollope and the "Radical" Frances Wright looks at their political commonalities rather than their differences. It traces the way in which these two women have been stereotyped and denigrated for over 100 years.

It considers the many contributions of both women to the most significant political movements of their times: anti-slavery; women's rights; and industrial reform. It also traces their defining influence on the ideas and writings of Walt Whitman, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Elizabeth Gaskell, Anthony Trollope, Charles Dickens, and the American suffragists

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Kissel argues that the myth of opposition which has served to categorize these two exceptional women's lives has devalued one life at the expense of the other - and ultimately the lives of both women. She concludes by suggesting that the patterns of these two women's lives, and of the literary and historical stereotypes by which they have become known (when known at all), have much to teach us today.

The terms "conservative" and "radical" can tell us little about the individual lives, writings, and works of either Frances Trollope or Frances Wright - and, perhaps, little about ourselves, as well. In Common Cause reveals how stereotypes obscure, devalue, or obliterate individual realities - and how they have done so for more than a century with the lives of two significant reformers and authors, Frances Trollope and Frances Wright