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 behavior 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 skillfully handled with that subtlety of ironic observation that has won Trollope such a wide and appreciative readership.


This 1857 sequel to The Warden wryly chronicles the struggle for control of the English diocese of Barchester. The evangelical but not particularly competent new bishop is Dr. Proudie, who with his awful wife and oily curate, Slope, maneuver for power. The Warden and Barchester Towers are part of Trollope's Barsetshire series, in which some of the same characters recur.


Novel by Anthony Trollope, published in three volumes in 1857. A satirical comedy, it is the second of the author's series of six BARSETSHIRE NOVELS and is considered to be his funniest. Set in Barchester, a cathedral town in the west of England, the novel opens with the political appointment of Dr. Proudie as the new bishop of Barchester. This event sets up the main conflict of the novel--the traditional (represented by the High Church forces, led by Archdeacon Grantly) versus the new (represented by the Low Church newcomers, led by Mrs. Proudie and, initially, her protege, the ambitious Mr. Obadiah Slope). Both forces contend for the newly vacant post of warden of Hiram's Hospital. A major subplot concerns Slope's unsuccessful attempts to marry into money. -- The Merriam-Webster Encyclopedia of Literature