Griffin analyzes the important but neglected body of anti-Catholic fiction written between the 1830s and the turn of the century in both Britain and America. Griffin examines Anglo-American anti-Catholicism and reveals how this sentiment was distilled to provide Victorians with a set of political, cultural and literary tropes through which they defined themselves as Protestant and therefore normative. This book will be essential reading for scholars working on British Victorian literature as well as nineteenth-century American literature; it will be of interest to scholars of literary, cultural and religious studies.