Barchester Towers

I enjoy all Trollope's Barchester novels, but this one is a particular longstanding favourite. It is always a pleasure to visit Barsetshire, so thoroughly imagined and described by Trollope (and later by Thirkell); the characters are convincing, often exasperating, always sympathetic; the story is engaging, and the outcome satisfactory; and the whole is interlaced with gentle humour. Trollope insists that the value of a book should be in the narrative and the working out of the story, not just in the final resolution. 'Take the last pages if you please -- learn from them all the results of our troubled… show more.

Technically speaking, this isn’t historical fiction because, when Trollope wrote it, it was contemporary (Victorian) fiction. But if you love Austen adaptations or anything set in later periods where people wore fancy, constrictive clothing, this book is for you. Barchester is a cathedral town getting a new bishop, and, oh, man, is everyone in a tizzy. Every cleric is angling for a promotion, simultaneously falling at the feet of the exotic Signora Madeline Vesey Neroni while refusing to bow the knee to the new powers that be. And if you have a soft spot for henpecked husbands, Trollope wrote one… show more.