Barchester Towers (Wordsworth Classics)

by Anthony Trollope (Author), Anthony Trollope (Author), Anthony Trollope (Author), Joanna Trollope (Introduction)

• Used

  Paperback
  1994

  $3.24

  Barchester Towers (1857) is the second of the six Chronicles of Barsetshire, the work in which, after a ten years' apprenticeship, Trollope finally found his distinctive voice. In this his most popular novel, the chronicler continues the story of Mr. Harding and his daughter Eleanor, begun in The Warden, 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. Love, mammon, clerical in-fighting and promotion again figure prominently and comically, all centred on the magnificently imagined cathedral city of Barchester. The central questions of this moral comedy - Who will be warden? Who will be dean? Who will marry Eleanor? - are skilfully handled with the subtlety of ironic observation that has won Trollope such a wide and appreciative readership over the last 140 years. For this new edition, John Sutherland has contributed an introduction and extensive notes, as well as a chronology of the novel's composition and current events, and a note on Trollopian names.

• Used

  Paperback
  1980

  $3.24

• Used

  Hardcover
  1987

  $3.24

• New

  Paperback
  2007

  $17.62

  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

  $15.57

  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.