1815: Anthony Trollope - Chronicles of Barsetshire II: Barchester Towers

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1815: Anthony Trollope - Chronicles of Barsetshire II: Barchester Towers

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1edwinbcn
Fev 8, 2015, 9:03 am



Barchester Towers, published in 1857, is the second novel in Anthony Trollope's series known as the "Chronicles of Barsetshire". Among other things it satirises the then raging antipathy in the Church of England between High Church and Evangelical adherents. Trollope began writing this book in 1855.

According to The Guardian, Barchester Towers is many readers' favourite Trollope, and it is included it the list of "1001 novels everyone should read.

2MissWatson
Editado: Maio 29, 2015, 3:37 am

I finished Barchester Towers yesterday and thoroughly enjoyed it. I rather like the way he addresses his readers and shares his ideas on how to write books. The only caveat is that sickly-sweet notion of women being like ivy who need a wall to cling to which cropped up a bit too often in connection with Eleanor Bold. His Signora, on the other hand, is the kind of woman i did not expect in a Victorian novel.

ETC

3rebeccanyc
Fev 7, 2016, 11:01 am



After feeling lukewarm about The Warden, I'm happy to report that I loved Barchester Towers and am totally on board with Trollope's Barsetshire series (after loving the Palliser series).

This novel brings back certain characters from the first book: Mr. Harding and his two daughters. Eleanor Bold, who got married at the end of the first novel, is now widowed with an infant child, and her much older sister, Susan, is still married to the archdeacon, Dr. Grantly, and living at Plumstead. But there is a new bishop in town, Dr. Proudie, who is anathema to the archdeacon because he holds a different view of the church's responsibilities, and who is married to a completely controlling woman, Mrs. Proudie, who is an amazing character. The chaplain to the bishop is Mr. Slope, a sleazy, lying, scheming man, who at the beginning thinks he can act as the bishop because the bishop and his wife are often in London. Then there are the Stanhopes: the father a churchman who has been living by Lake Como in Italy but is summoned home by the new bishop, the mother often ill, and three remarkable children. Charlotte runs the family, Bertie is a ne'er-do-well who is constantly in debt, and Madeline, a beauty, had been married to an Italian who apparently beat her so severely that she is crippled and has to be carried everywhere. This doesn't interfere with her purpose in life, which is getting men to fall in love with her and then tossing them out.

The plot revolves around much ecclesiastical scheming -- and much romantic scheming. The ecclesiastical scheming involves the wardenship of the hospital (a home for poor old men, not a hospital in our terms) featured in The Warden and the role of the dean, who falls ill in the novel and ultimately dies. It also involves a clash between the old-timers in Barchester, who seem (according to the copious notes in my Oxford World Classics edition) to be higher church than the newcomers (who seem to have an obsession with Sunday schools). Dr. Grantly enlists several outsiders to help him fight the bishop. The romantic scheming mostly involves Eleanor, who has inherited a sizable income from Mr. Bold. Mr. Slope, in his sleazy way, wants to marry her, and Charlotte encourages Bertie to make a play for her too, while inserting herself as Eleanor's new best friend. Everyone thinks Eleanor is going to marry Mr. Slope, which strikes horror into all of them, but Trollope tells us midway through the book that Eleanor won't marry either Mr. Slope or Bertie. There is another man, which this reader spotted as Eleanor's new husband early on, but Trollope takes us through so many twists and turns that I couldn't figure out how it would happen. Eventually, as I've come to realize is Trollope's habit, good triumphs and the bad fail.

Onward with the Barsetshire series!

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