Barchester Towers (Oxford World's Classics)

by Anthony Trollope (Author), Michael Sadleir (Editor), Michael Sadleir (Editor), Frederick Page (Editor), Anthony Trollope (Author), Frederick Page (Editor), John Sutherland (Contributor), Edward Ardizzone (Illustrator), Anthony Trollope (Author)

• Used

  Paperback
  1998

  $3.35

  Barchester Towers , Trollope's most popular novel, is the second of the six Chronicles of Barsetshire. The Chronicles follow the intrigues of ambition and love in the cathedral town of Barchester. Trollope was of course interested in the Church, that pillar of Victorian society - in its susceptibility to corruption, hypocrisy, and blinkered conservatism - but the Barsetshire novels are no more 'ecclesiastical' than his Palliser novels are 'political'. It is the behaviour of the individuals within a power structure that interests him. In this novel, Trollope continues the story of Mr Harding and his daughter Eleanor, adding to his cast of characters that oily symbol of progress Mr Slope, the hen-pecked Dr Proudie, and the amiable and breezy Stanhope family. The central questions of this moral comedy - who will be warden? Who will be dean? Who will marry Eleanor? - are skilfully handled with that subtlety of ironic observation that has won Trollope such a wide and appreciative readership.

• Used

  Paperback
  1993

  $3.35

• Used

  Hardcover
  1946

  $3.35

• New

  Paperback
  2007

  $18.49

  Mrs Proudie, the warlike wife of the new Bishop of Barchester, brings the Reverend Slope into the Bishop's Palace to help dominate her husband and rule the local clergy. But Slope is a snake in the grass, determined to find a rich wife, to win advancement for himself, even to fight Mrs Proudie if necessary. Their battle becomes a furious dance, involving rich, pretty Widow Bold, angry Archdeacon Grantly, man-eating Signora Neroni, gentle Mr Harding, confused Parson Quiverful and his fourteen noisy children. This classic comic story is Trollope's most famous novel.

• New

  Hardcover
  1992

  $17.65

  Anthony Trollope was well aware that the seemingly parochial power struggles that determine the action of Barchester Towers - struggles whose comic possibilities he exploits to hilarious effect - actually went to the heart of mid-Victorian English society, and had, in other times and other guises, led to civil war and constitutional upheaval. That awareness heightens the comedy and intensifies the drama in this magnificent novel and it transforms the story of a fight for ascendency among the clergy and dependants of a great English cathedral into something fundamental and universal. Barchester Towers is the second of Trollope's six Barchester Novels, all published by Everyman's Library.