Barchester Towers

What It's About

Barchester Towers (1857) is the second novel in Trollope's Chronicles of Barsetshire, continuing the story of the fictional cathedral city of Barchester. When the mild old Bishop Grantly dies, the diocese passes to the weak-willed Bishop Proudie, who is dominated in turn by his formidable wife Mrs Proudie and his oily, ambitious chaplain Mr Slope. Their attempts to shake up the sleepy diocese set them at odds with the existing clergy, particularly the gentle Mr Harding and his combative son-in-law Archdeacon Grantly. Running alongside this clerical power struggle is a lighter comic plot centred on Mr Harding's widowed daughter Eleanor Bold, whose hand is sought by several very different suitors.

Key Concepts

The novel is a satire of clerical politics and personal ambition dressed up as piety, and it plays the old High Church establishment off against the reforming, evangelical Mr Slope. Mrs Proudie became one of Victorian fiction's most enduring comic creations, a domineering wife who wields real power from behind her ineffectual husband. Trollope also uses the courtship plot to poke fun at Victorian marriage-market calculations, weighing genuine affection against money, status and self-interest.

About the Author

Anthony Trollope (1815–1882) was an English novelist who spent much of his career as a senior official with the Post Office, a job he combined with a highly disciplined, early-morning writing routine. Born into a family struggling with debt and social embarrassment, he went on to become one of the most prolific and popular novelists of the Victorian era, admired for his shrewd, unsentimental observation of English social and institutional life.