The Old Vicarage

The Novel

The story is as quiet as one of Miss Austen’s, but the characters and incidents are touched with a minuteness and a delicacy that supply the place of a more extended canvas. Charles Huyton, the devoted lover, loves Hilary Duncan better than anything in the world—except himself and his own wilful ways… 


Contemporary Reviews

Athenaeum, May 10, 1856 — There has been a harvest of good novels this season, and The Old Vicarage may hold up its head amongst the best.

Scientific American, Volume 12, 1856 — The Old Vicarage, by Mrs. Hubback, is a novel of an interesting and thrilling character. A sound morality seems to pervade its narratives and conversations.


The Author

Catherine Anne Hubback (7 July 1818 – 25 February 1877) was an English novelist, and the eighth child and fourth daughter of Sir Francis Austen (1774-1865), a brother to novelist Jane Austen (1775–1817). Born in 1818, Catherine never knew her Aunt Jane. In 1842 Catherine married the barrister John Hubback. She began writing fiction to support herself and her three sons after her husband was institutionalized with a breakdown. In 1850, she wrote The Younger Sister, the first completed continuation of Jane Austen's The Watsons. In the next thirteen years, she completed nine more novels:

1851: The Wife’s Sister as well as Kate Penrose (Life and its Lessons)

1854: May And December

1855: Malvern

1856: Agnes Milbourne and The Old Vicarage

1857: The Rival Suitors

1858: The Stage and the Company

1863: The Mistakes of a Life


She emigrated to California, USA in 1870. In October 1871 she published the short story The Stewardess’ Story. In the autumn of 1876 she removed to Gainesville, Prince William Co, VA, where she died in 1877.