However, misfortune strikes in the form of Colonel Marrable, the Captain's father, who swindles his son out of the fortune left him by his late mother.

Mary, dispirited, yields to Gilmore's importunements, warning him that theirs must be a long engagement and that she will end it if Captain Marrable finds himself able to marry a woman without a fortune.

Sam's sister Carry is even worse off: having yielded to a seducer, she has been disowned by her father, and is living a life of sin in an unknown location.

He finds her a temporary home, but it becomes clear to him that the only permanent solution must involve bringing her back into the Brattle family, which means winning her father's forgiveness.

A third subplot centres on the relationship between Fenwick, Mr. Puddleham, the village's Methodist minister, and the Marquis of Trowbridge, Bullhampton's principal landowner.

The embarrassed marquis pays to move the chapel to a new location, and through the intervention of his son, a suave Member of Parliament, he and Fenwick are reconciled.

"The Vicar of Bullhampton was written chiefly with the object of exciting not only pity but sympathy for fallen woman, and of raising a feeling of forgiveness for such in the minds of other women.

[1] On 5 August 1869, shortly after The Vicar had begun to appear in the form of monthly numbers, Dion Boucicault's Formosa; or, The Railroad to Ruin opened at Drury Lane.

[4][5] Trollope leapt into the fray somewhat belatedly, in the pages of Saint Paul's in October 1869, with an article on the Formosa controversy that can be read as a defence of and an advertisement for The Vicar.

[6] He took exception to several of the arguments in The Times: young women of the 1860s, he wrote, were not unaware of the existence of prostitution; and attempting to keep them in ignorance would not conduce to virtue.

Rather than promoting vice, an accurate depiction of the squalid and miserable life of a woman of the streets would arm young people to resist temptation.

... That which is vile and dirty, squalid and miserable,—that, of which we may say that were its horrors known such knowledge would deter more thoroughly than any ignorance,—is exhibited as a bright existence, full of danger indeed, but still open to all that is noble, and capable of final success.

[7] He reiterated the points he had made regarding Formosa: that while depicting a fallen woman as glamorous or noble might lead impressionable readers to vice, a true depiction of such a woman's misery might deter readers from yielding to temptation; and might soften the hearts of parents whose daughters have fallen, and thus afford an opportunity of returning to decency.

[11] In David Skilton's view, the Carry Brattle and Mary Lowther subplots together comprise a rejoinder to Eliza Lynn Linton's "The Girl of the Period".

[14] According to Skilton,[12] the highly unromantic portrayal of Carry Brattle's condition was a denial of Linton's claim that demimondaines were "gorgeously attired and sumptuously appointed ... flattered, fêted, and courted";[13] and the trouble that Mary Lowther brought upon herself and others came about not because of her disregard for counsel and rebuke, but because she attempted to follow the advice of her friends and elders.

Near the end of the novel, Trollope writes: [The author] has endeavoured to describe a young woman, prompted in all her doings by a conscience wide awake, guided by principle, willing, if need be, to sacrifice herself, struggling always to keep herself from doing wrong, but yet causing infinite grief to others, and nearly bringing herself to utter shipwreck, because, for a while, she allowed herself to believe that it would be right for her to marry a man whom she did not love.

[15] In Skilton's opinion, since the stories of the two women are both essential to Trollope's refutation of Linton, neither can be given "titular pre-eminence"; thus the book had to take its name from the vicar.

He defended Bishop Colenso, expressed doubt about the literal truth of the Old Testament, and questioned the doctrine of eternal punishment contained in the Athanasian Creed.

[27] The novel was begun in Washington, D.C., where the author was on a mission to negotiate a postal treaty and international copyright arrangements with the United States.

[25] As Trollope had agreed not to allow another of his novels to run serially during the first six months of The Vicar's career, the editor's request would have diminished the author's income.

Once A Week had bought the rights to Victor Hugo's forthcoming novel, L'homme qui rit, expecting to begin serialisation in January 1869.

The Gentleman's Magazine was, in Michael Sadleir's words, "a very inferior paper with a lower class of reader and a poor general reputation".

B. Lippincott & Co.[31] Bradbury and Evans released the novel in book form in 1870, as a single volume with thirty illustrations by Henry Woods.

In 1872, a Dutch translation, De Predikant van Bullhampton, was published by Roelants of Schiedam; in 1873, a Russian Bullhamptonsky Vikaryi was released in St.

[34] Contemporary reviewers tended to neglect the Carry Brattle subplot and focus on Mary Lowther, whose conduct was criticised by Blackwood's Magazine,[35] by The Times, and by Mrs.

Henry James, who had loudly derided several of Trollope's novels of the mid-1860s,[39] described it in an 1883 article as a "slow but excellent story, which is a capital example of interest produced by the quietest conceivable means".

[41] More recently still, Trollope scholars have looked upon it with increasing favour, describing it as a powerful work that has suffered undeserved neglect.

[17] Present-day critics have focussed increasingly on the Carry Brattle subplot;[10][11][23] it has been suggested, supported in part by the similarity of passages from The Vicar, from the Autobiography, and from The Small House at Allington referring to Johnny Eames, that some aspects of her portrayal are based on the novelist's own early adulthood in London.