The Barsetshire Chronicles - All 6 Books in One Edition: The Warden, Barchester Towers, Doctor Thorne, Framley Parsonage, The Small House at Allington & The Last Chronicle of Barset

Product Information

This is a work of satire. It pokes a finger at the press. It draws attention to church infighting and squabbling for the attainment of position and prestige rather than Christian beliefs. Human relationships, between friends, between enemies, between siblings and between husbands and wives, are presented in such a manner as to make readers nod in recognition, smile and laugh. BBC Radio 4 released another radio adaptation titled The Barchester Chronicles in 2014. [47] This programme was created by Michael Symmons Roberts, and also covered all six Barsetshire novels. [48] Inspired works [ edit ] In 1993, The Small House at Allington was released as a dramatised radio programme on BBC Radio 4. [45] It was created by Martin Wade and directed by Cherry Cookson. [45] Each character was played by a voice actor, with the story being accompanied by music and sound effects. [46] Following its success, the other five novels were also adapted to this form and released between December 1995 and March 1998 as The Chronicles of Barset. [45] I started my grand read-and-review of the Barsetshire Chronicles over at The Geek Girl Project. My review of The Warden is up there, as is my review of Barchester Towers. My review of Dr. Thorne was on Bookwyrme's Lair last week. I will be posting a review a week there until the series' en.

Timothy West’s narration is superb, fantastic, sublime. I have listened to other audiobooks read by West, but this is his best. It cannot be improved upon. His intonations are marvelous. He captures, through the nflections of his voice, the characters’ personalities perfectly-–the meek, the obsequious, the brash, the kind and the generous. The narration is outstanding. If I mention how much I like one intonation, you’ll think this one is the best, but they are all very well performed. Five stars for the audiobook narration by Timothy West. I did decrease the speed to 90%. Chruch politics continues here on a full scale, and I was surprised to find with what little favour Trollope has portrayed his clergy. :) However, they hugely contributed to the enjoyment of the story. In Barchester Tower, Trollope introduces one of the sliest clergymen in Victorian literature in the shape of Obadiah Slope. Even though he isn't the protagonist, his role in the story justified my considering him as such, for the whole story nearly revolves around him. Odious though he may be, and annoying enough to feel like boxing his ears yourself as Eleanor did, he certainly provides the foremost entertainment of the story. :) Barchester Towers: The cathedral town is changing again, with the arrival of a new Bishop, his wife and his Chaplain from London throwing all Barchester into disarray. Starring Tim Pigott-Smith and Una Stubbs.The quote makes me smile. It’s short and right to the point. One gets a feel for Trollope’s style from it. He uses words rarely used today. Tuft-hunting is the practice of playing up to persons of high social standing. When a reader doesn’t know the exact meaning of given word, it is not hard to figure this out from the context. There is humor, irony in the prose. Trollope follows the middle road; ordinary people, albeit from different classes, are his characters, and he doesn’t exaggerate; he doesn’t go to extremes. It is not hard to relate to the characters despite that Trollope writes of the 1850s and we live almost two centuries later. Smashing love stories (all of them, including the married parties--and particularly one (not the main one, either!)--but I won't give it away). He ventures to reprobate that system which goes so far to violate all proper confidence between the author and his readers, by maintaining nearly to the end of the third volume a mystery as to the fate of their favourite personage. Nay, more, and worse than this is too frequently done. Have not often the profoundest efforts of genius been used to baffle the aspirations of the reader, to raise false hopes and false fears, and to give rise to expectations which are never to be realized? Are not promises all but made of delightful horrors, in lieu of which the writer produces nothing but most commonplace realities in his final chapter? And is there not a species of deceit in this to which the honesty of the present age should lend no countenance? While these clergymen provided the best entertainment, the non-clergy too was not far behind. These characters, most being women, show that when it comes to scheming, they could outdo the learned dons. :) Out of them, Madeline Neroni holds the brightest candle, closely followed by Mrs. Proudie, the true power behind the bishop's robe. It is interesting to note that how much these two characters entertained me in their different way, even though I couldn't like either of them. This shows how well Trollope has portrayed his characters. Except for my slight disappointment at Mr. Harding and Eleanor playing second fiddle to the new characters, I've no complaint against him.

This is the second volume in the Barsetshire Chronicles by Anthony Trollope. As compared to the first book, this is more humorous, more satirical and more people centric. Some lines were very funny. Trollope is a keen observer of the absurdities and little foibles of human nature. There is an inherent simplicity in this writing that gives the books a more comforting and a “friendly” feeling. There are again some topics related to Church politics that I would have been clueless against had it not been for the helpful endnotes. And that, perhaps, is why I felt this novel to be a disappointment when compared with the others of his that I’ve read—and also why I find it hard to believe that Barchester Towers is his most famous and widely-read novel. Although weak Trollope is far better than the best work by a novelist less talented than he—e.g., see my review of Doctor Wortle’s School—still, this novel is in no way indicative of the scope and utter humanity to be found in Trollope’s richer and more complex novels like The Claverings, which remains my all-time favorite of his to this day.a b c d e f Pollard, Arthur (2016) [1978]. Anthony Trollope. New York: Routledge. ISBN 978-1-317-21198-3. OCLC 954490289. The Chronicles of Barsetshire is a series of six novels by English author Anthony Trollope, published between 1855 and 1867. They are set in the fictional English county of Barsetshire and its cathedral town of Barchester. [1] The novels concern the dealings of the clergy and the gentry, and the political, amatory, and social manoeuvrings among them. [2] All in all, Framley Parsonage was a worthwhile read. So far, I've enjoyed Trollpe's town novels more than his country ones, but all the same, I'm glad I'm reading the series. I'm getting more and more inclined to try the Palliser novels some day. Despite a series not initially being intended, [3] few have argued against the importance of appreciating each novel as part of the Chronicles of Barsetshire. As R. C. Terry writes, "the ironies embedded in the novel achieve their full effect only when one considers the entire Barsetshire series". [26] Mary Poovey suggests that even before they were formally published as a series, reviewers understood their collective value. As The Examiner (1867) wrote, "the public should have these Barsetshire novels extant, not only as detached works, but duly bound, lettered, and bought as a connected series". [3]