The Vicar of Bullhampton is an 1870 novel by Anthony Trollope. It is made up of three intertwining subplots: the courtship of a young woman by two suitors; a feud between the titular Broad church vicar and a Low church nobleman, abetted by a Methodist minister; and the vicar's attempt to rehabilitate a young woman who has gone astray.Trollope expected his depiction of a fallen woman to be controversial, and unusually for him wrote a preface defending it. But the anticipated controversy never materialised, and contemporary reviewers tended to ignore that subplot, focussing instead on the courtship in the novel. Reviews were generally less than positive; many reviewers and readers who had acquired a taste for Trollope from the 1850s-60s Barchester novels were unhappy about the darker tone of later novels such as this one. Trollope's fortunes suffered because of the mode of the novel's publication. Owing to mismanagement by the publishers, it was not serialised in a popular magazine, as originally intended. Instead, it was issued as monthly numbers, a form of serialisation that had become unpopular with the reading public, and Trollope lost readers as a result.The Vicar of Bullhampton is set in a small town in Wiltshire. It develops three subplots, all connected with Frank Fenwick, the eponymous vicar.... Anthony Trollope ( 24 April 1815 - 6 December 1882) was an English novelist of the Victorian era. Among his best-known works is a series of novels collectively known as the Chronicles of Barsetshire, which revolves around the imaginary county of Barsetshire. He also wrote novels on political, social, and gender issues, and other topical matters. Trollope's literary reputation dipped somewhat during the last years of his life, but he had regained the esteem of critics by the mid-20th century. Biography: Thomas Anthony Trollope, Anthony's father, was a barrister. Though a clever and well-educated man and a Fellow of New College, Oxford, he failed at the bar due to his bad temper. In addition, his ventures into farming proved unprofitable, and he lost an expected inheritance when an elderly childless uncle remarried and had children. As a son of landed gentry, he wanted his sons to be raised as gentlemen and to attend Oxford or Cambridge. Anthony Trollope suffered much misery in his boyhood owing to the disparity between the privileged background of his parents and their comparatively small means.Born in London, Anthony attended Harrow School as a free day pupil for three years from the age of seven because his father's farm, acquired for that reason, lay in that neighbourhood. After a spell at a private school at Sunbury, he followed his father and two older brothers to Winchester College, where he remained for three years. He returned to Harrow as a day-boy to reduce the cost of his education. Trollope had some very miserable experiences at these two public schools. They ranked as two of the most élite schools in England, but Trollope had no money and no friends, and was bullied a great deal. At the age of twelve, he fantasised about suicide. However, he also daydreamed, constructing elaborate imaginary worlds....