8vo. In three volumes. [4], 326; [2], 311, [1]; [2], 325pp. With an engraved frontispiece to each volume, and a further nine engraved plates by John Leech. Contemporary gilt-tooled green crushed half-morocco, green cloth boards, contrasting brown morocco lettering-pieces, marbled edges. Very minor shelf-wear. Marbled endpapers, bookseller's tickets of S. & T. Gilbert of London to all FEPs, scattered spotting, plates foxed and browned.

The first edition of Fanny Trollope's (1779-1863) sixteenth novel - a melodramatic tale of poverty, betrayal, and infanticide; initially serialised in monthly parts December 1842 to November 1843. The work attacks (much as Dickens had done in Oliver Twist) the application of the 1834 Poor Law Amendment Act. The titular heroine, a strikingly beautiful seamstress, is artfully seduced by the son of a squire, to whom she bears a child. Due to the bastardy clause of the Act, he cannot be made responsible for the child, and when her mother suddenly dies, Jessie is forced into a horrific workhouse. Suspected of infanticide, she is befriended by a resourceful middle-class saviour, Mrs. Maxwell, who entraps her dastardly seducer, discovering it was in fact him who killed the child. Jessie is pronounced innocent, but dies before hearing of the verdict.

The novel caused something of a stir, not only for its fierce propaganda, but for Trollope's vagaries during the course of the serial publication. As she later candidly admitted, evidence provided to her regarding the 1834 Act caused her to change her mind on the iniquities of the new law, halfway through the story.