Castle Richmond, first published in 1860, has become one of the better known of Trollope's Irish novels. Written in 1859, on the eve of Trollope's departure from Ireland, the novel is set in south-west Ireland and covers the period 1846-7, what Trollop calls "the famine year" Famine details provide the back-drop to a conventional story of upper-class love while the threat of illegitimacy hanging over the novel's hero and the related blackmail plot represent the other narrative concerns. Criticism of Castle Richmond has centred on the relationship between the famine and love plots. One of the novel's first reviews, published in the Saturday Review on 19 May 1860, anticipated other critiques in its condemnation of Trollope's mixture of subjects;"It is of course impossible to persuade him to give up a practice which he appears to have adopted in principle, but the milk and the water really should be in separate pails."