Rating: 
Summary: A great volume in a great series of novels
Review: This is the second of the six Barsetshire novels, and the first great novel in that series. THE WARDEN, while pleasant, primarily serves as a prequel to this novel. To be honest, if Trollope had not gone on to write BARCHESTER TOWERS, there would not be any real reason to read THE WARDEN. But because it introduces us to characters and situations that are crucial to BARCHESTER TOWERS, one really ought to have read THE WARDEN before reading this novel.Trollope presents a dilemma for most readers. On the one hand, he wrote an enormous number of very good novels. On the other hand, he wrote no masterpieces. None of Trollope's books can stand comparison with the best work of Jane Austen, Flaubert, Dickens, George Eliot, Tolstoy, or Dostoevsky. On the other hand, none of those writers wrote anywhere near as many excellent as Trollope did. He may not have been a very great writer, but he was a very good one, and perhaps the most prolific good novelist who ever lived. Conservatively assessing his output, Trollope wrote at least 20 good novels. Trollope may not have been a genius, but he did possess a genius for consistency. So, what to read? Trollope's wrote two very good series, two other novels that could be considered minor classics, and several other first rate novels. I recommend to friends that they try the Barsetshire novels, and then, if they find themselves hooked, to go on to read the Political series of novels (sometimes called the Palliser novels, which I feel uncomfortable with, since it exaggerates the role of that family in most of the novels). The two "minor classics" are THE WAY WE LIVE NOW and HE KNEW HE WAS RIGHT. The former is a marvelous portrait of Victorian social life, and the latter is perhaps the finest study of human jealousy since Shakespeare's OTHELLO. BARSETSHIRE TOWERS is, therefore, coupled with THE WARDEN, a magnificent place, and perhaps the best place to enter Trollope's world. There are many, many reasons to read Trollope. He probably is the great spokesperson for the Victorian Mind. Like most Victorians, he is a bit parochial, with no interest in Europe, and very little interest in the rest of the world. Despite THE AMERICAN SENATOR, he has few American's or colonials in his novels, and close to no foreigners of any type. He is politically liberal in a conservative way, and is focussed almost exclusively on the upper middle class and gentry. He writes a good deal about young men and women needing and hoping to marry, but with a far more complex approach than we find in Jane Austen. His characters are often compelling, with very human problems, subject to morally complex situations that we would not find unfamiliar. Trollope is especially good with female characters, and in his sympathy for and liking of very independent, strong females he is somewhat an exception of the Victorian stereotype. Anyone wanting to read Trollope, and I heartily believe that anyone who loves Dickens, Austen, Eliot, Hardy, and Thackery will want to, could find no better place to start than with reading the first two books in the Barsetshire Chronicles, beginning first with the rather short THE WARDEN and then progressing to this very, very fun and enjoyable novel.
Rating:
Summary: This is where you start with Trollope
Review: This is Trollope's funniest and most popular novel, and the one where he really came into his own as a comic novelist. Although it is second in the Chronicles of Barset, I greatly recommend starting here if you have never read Trollope before rather than beginning with the first book in the series, THE WARDEN: you'll quickly pick up everything you needed to know that happened in the first book at the beginning of BARCHESTER TOWERS, and this is a much, much funnier novel (and is more likely to hook you into his way of seeing the world). BARCHESTER TOWERS is the greatest novel of petty infighting ever written: it anticipates (and surpasses) the many British and American college novels written in the twentieth century. Very little happens in this novel: two old clergymen die in the course of this novel and have replacements chosen for them, and a widow is re-married. But to the inhabitants of Trollope's Barchester it is nothing less than all-out war, waged between the archdeacon's faction (representing the conservative church) on one hand and the new bishop's wife, Mrs. Proudie, and her chaplain Mr. Slope (representing the "Low Church" movement) on the other. Everyone else, including the henpecked bishop, is caught in the middle. There are two absolutely uproarious setpieces in this novel: the reception Mrs. Proudie throws at the bishop's palace, and the hilariously quaint medieval fair held at the country seat of Ullathorne (complete with such ghastly oddities as a quintain for practicing jousting) are as funny as anything Jane Austen ever wrote. Trollope may not have had Austen's genius for presenting ethical quandaries, but he comes second only to her as the great novelist of comic manners in the 19th century.
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