Barchester Towers

by Anthony Trollope

Overview

Anthony Trollope, (born April 24, 1815, London, Eng.—died Dec. 6, 1882, London), English novelist whose popular success concealed until long after his death the nature and extent of his literary merit. A series of books set in the imaginary English county of Barsetshire remains his best loved and most famous work, but he also wrote convincing novels of political life as well as studies that show great psychological penetration. One of his greatest strengths was a steady, consistent vision of the social structures of Victorian England, which he re-created in his books with unusual solidity.

Trollope grew up as the son of a sometime scholar, barrister, and failed gentleman farmer. He was unhappy at the great public schools of Winchester and Harrow. Adolescent awkwardness continued until well into his 20s. The years 1834–41 he spent miserably as a junior clerk in the General Post Office, but he was then transferred as a postal surveyor to Ireland, where he began to enjoy a social life. In 1844 he married Rose Heseltine, an Englishwoman, and set up house at Clonmel, in Tipperary. He then embarked upon a literary career that leaves a dominant impression of immense energy and versatility.

The Warden (1855) was his first novel of distinction, a penetrating study of the warden of an old people’s home who is attacked for making too much profit from a charitable sinecure. During the next 12 years Trollope produced five other books set, like The Warden, in Barsetshire: Barchester Towers (1857), Doctor Thorne (1858), Framley Parsonage (1861), The Small House at Allington (1864), and The Last Chronicle of Barset (serially 1866–67; 1867). Barchester Towers is the funniest of the series; Doctor Thorne perhaps the best picture of a social system based on birth and the ownership of land; and The Last Chronicle, with its story of the sufferings of the scholarly Mr. Crawley, an underpaid curate of a poor parish, the most pathetic.

The Barsetshire novels excel in memorable characters, and they exude the atmosphere of the cathedral community and of the landed aristocracy. (britannica.com)

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781618955814
Publisher:	Bibliotech Press
Publication date:	07/10/2019
Pages:	372
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 1.00(d)

About the Author

Anthony Trollope (24 April 1815- 6 December 1882) was one of the most successful, prolific and respected English novelists of the Victorian era. Some of his best-loved works, the Chronicles of Barsetshire, revolve around the imaginary county of Barsetshire

John Bowen has written widely on nineteenth-century fiction and his publications include Other Dickens: Pickwick to Chuzzlewit (OUP, 2000) and Palgrave Advances in Charles Dickens Studies (2003), co-edited with Robert L. Patten. He has edited Dickens's Barnaby Rudge for Penguin and Trollope's Phineas Redux for Oxford World's Classics (2011).

Table of Contents

I. Who Will Be the New Bishop?
II. Hiram's Hospital, According to an Act of Parliament
III. Dr. and Mrs. Proudie
IV. The Bishop's Chaplain
V. A Morning Visit
VI. War
VII. The Dean and Chapter Take Counsel
VIII. The Ex-Warden Rejoices in His Probable Return to the Hospital
IX. The Stanhope Family
X. Mrs. Proudie's Reception—Commences
XII. Slope versus Harding
XIII. The Rubbish Cart
XIV. The New Champion
XV. The Widow's Suitors
XVI. Baby Worship
XVII. Who Shall be Cock of the Walk?
XVIII. The Widow's Persecution
XIX. Barchester by Moonlight
XX. Mr. Arabin
XXI. St. Ewold's Parsonage
XXII. The Thorns of Ullathorne
XXIII. Mr. Asrabinn Reads Himself in at St. Ewold's
XXIV. Mr. Slopes Manages Very Cleverly at Puddingdale
XXV. Fourteen Arguments in Favour of Mr. Quiverful's Claims
XXVI. Mrs. Proudie Wrestles and Gets a Fall
XXVII. A Love Scene
XXVIII. Mrs. Bold is Entertained by Dr. and Mrs. Grantly at Plumstead
XXIX. A Serious Interview
XXX. Another Love Scene
XXXI. The Bishop's Library
XXII. A New Candidate for Ecclesiastical Honours
XXXIII. Mrs. Proudie Victrix
XXXIV. Oxford—The Master and the Tutor of Lazarus
XXXV. Miss Thorne's Fete Champerte
XXXVI. Ullathorne Sports—Act I
XXXVII. The Countess De Courcy, Mrs. Proudie, and the Signora Neroni Meet Each Other at Ullathorne
XXXVIII. The Bishop Sits Down to Breakfast, and the Dean Dies
XXXIX The Lookalofts and the Greenacres
XL. Ullathorne Sports—Act II
XLII. Ullathorne Sports—Act III
XLIII. Mr. and Mrs. Quiverful are Made Happy. Mr. Slope is Encouraged by the Press
XLIV. Mrs. Bold at Home
XLV. The Stanhopes at Home
XLVI. Mr. Slope's Parting Interview with the Signora
XLVII The Dean Elect
XLVIII Miss Thorne Shows her Talent at Match-making
XLIX. The Beelzebub Colt
L. The Archdeacon is Satisfied with the State of Affairs
LI. Mr. Slope Bids Farewell to the Palace and its Inhabitants
LII. The New Dean Takes Possession of the Deanery, and the New Warden of the Hospital
LIII. Conclusion

Editorial Reviews

Narrator Timothy West has the technique, versatility, and sense of place to give a fine, idiomatic performance, but not quite the strength of personality to make us give a hoot about the characters and their concerns.”

AudioFile

"There is no happiness in love, except at the end of an English novel."

― Anthony Trollope, Barchester Towers

"Till we can become divine, we must be content to be human, lest in our hurry for change we sink to something lower."

― Anthony Trollope, Barchester Towers

"Considering how much we are all given to discuss the characters of others, and discuss them often not in the strictest spirit of charity, it is singular how little we are inclined to think that others can speak ill-naturedly of us, and how angry and hurt we are when proof reaches us that they have done so. It is hardly too much to say that we all of us occasionally speak of our dearest friends in a manner in which those dearest friends would very little like to hear themselves mentioned, and that we nevertheless expect that our dearest friends shall invariably speak of us as though they were blind to all our faults, but keenly alive to every shade of our virtues."

― Anthony Trollope, Barchester Towers

From the Publisher

The second and best of the prolific author’s six novels about the fictional Barsetshire satirizes ecclesiastical politics in rural Victorian Britain. Among the many superbly drawn characters, the risibly overbearing Mrs. Proudie and the feckless Ethelbert Stanhope particularly shine. Some of us may even recognize the central conflict from our own experiences as congregants. Trollope once said, “In the writing of BARCHESTER TOWERS, I took great delight.” The listener gathers that, in the reading of it, Simon Vance also takes great delight. Obviously, he relishes impersonating the dramatis personae. One gets the impression that the more, the merrier, as far as he’s concerned. In addition, he delivers the fustian narrative with particular fluidity, verve, and grace. Y.R. © AudioFile 2007, Portland, Maine

FEB/MAR 07 - AudioFile