Jessie Phillips: A Tale of the Present Day was published by Henry Colburn in 1843, initially in monthly parts. The novel is Trollope’s attack on the New Poor Law of 1834, specifically its bastardy clause, which removed a man’s legal obligation to support his illegitimate children and shifted the entire burden onto the mother — a provision that reformers rightly saw as punishing women for men’s sexual misconduct.
The plot follows Jessie Phillips, a respectable young woman seduced by the son of a local magnate, who is left pregnant and abandoned. Under the old poor law, she could have required the father to contribute to the child’s support; under the new law, she has no such recourse. The novel traces the consequences of this legal abandonment: poverty, social ostracism, desperation, and ultimately tragedy. Trollope’s argument is clear and furious: the law protects the powerful and punishes the vulnerable, and its effects fall disproportionately on women.
The novel belongs to the genre of “social problem” fiction that flourished in the 1840s, alongside the industrial novels of Gaskell and Disraeli. Trollope’s contribution is distinctive for its feminist focus: while other social-problem novelists addressed class exploitation in general terms, Trollope specifically identifies the gendered dimension of poverty — the ways in which law and social custom conspire to make women’s poverty different from and worse than men’s.
Collecting Jessie Phillips
First edition in parts (Henry Colburn, London, 1842–1843): Monthly parts with wrappers.
Market values:
- First edition in parts (complete): $300–$700
- First edition (3 vols, cloth): $200–$500
- Later reprints: $40–$100