The Vicar of Wrexhill was published by Richard Bentley in 1837 and is Trollope’s most effective novel of social criticism — a sustained attack on evangelical hypocrisy that drew on her experiences of religious enthusiasm in America (the camp meetings she described so vividly in Domestic Manners) and applied them to the English context. The Reverend William Jacob Cartwright is a masterful creation: a Low Church clergyman of enormous personal magnetism who uses his position to gain power over a wealthy widow, marry her, control her money, and terrorize her children.
Trollope’s satire operates on multiple levels: Cartwright is personally hypocritical (he preaches abstinence while living luxuriously), institutionally dangerous (he uses the authority of the Church to silence opposition), and psychologically penetrating (he understands exactly how to exploit the weakness and loneliness of women in a patriarchal society). The novel’s power comes from Trollope’s refusal to make Cartwright merely ridiculous — he is genuinely threatening, and his victims’ inability to resist him is made psychologically convincing.
The novel was controversial: evangelical readers denounced it as anti-religious, while liberal reviewers praised its courage. Her son Anthony — who would go on to create the definitive fictional clergymen of Victorian literature in the Barsetshire novels — clearly learned from his mother’s example, though he treated the clergy with more sympathy and less fury.
Collecting The Vicar of Wrexhill
First edition (Richard Bentley, London, 1837): Three volumes, cloth boards (“triple-decker” format).
Market values:
- First edition (3 vols): $300–$800
- Later Victorian reprints: $40–$100
- Modern editions: $10–$25