William's Wife

"Miss Trevelyan's scope of human experience makes her one of the most important novelists of our day." - Leonora Eyles, Times Literary Supplement

"Gertrude Trevelyan is in the first flight of English novelists and William's Wife is perhaps the most distinguished novel that she has written." Hobart Courier-Mail

William's Wife is perhaps the most normal horror story ever written. There are no monsters or murderers here – just two ordinary people. Jane Atkins is a lady's maid who thinks she has moved up in the world by marrying William Chirp, a successful widowed grocer in her town of Jewsbury.

Jane has managed her own affairs and is proud of her small savings. But she quickly finds that William exercises control over everything in the household, down to the last penny. Jane resorts to subterfuge and evasion to keep going, but as time goes on, she takes on William's suspicions and fears. After he dies, she spirals down into an obsessive paranoia and penury that Trevelyan depicts with chilling realism – a portrait unique in its convincing oppression.

"A book which lingers in the mind, which leaves the reader unsettled and disturbed." Alice Jolly

"Novelists seldom achieve such a power of close concentration upon a single theme as Miss Trevelyan has shown in this macabre tale." Liverpool Daily Post