anthony trollope the last chronicle of barset

Proudie, whose shenanigans make Barchester Towers the comical tour de force that it is, even though it’s a bit of an outsider when taken with the rest of the Barsetshire books. Many of the characters that populate The Last Chronicle appear in the previous four books, but especially from Framley Parsonage and The Small House at Allington -and, of course, the fire-cracking Mrs. Some of this is awkward and clumsy, with quite a bit of redundant scenes toward the beginning of the novel, especially as he attempts to gain the reader’s sympathy for poor Josiah Crawley, a perpetual curate (and an unlikely protagonist for this, but, as it turns out, the perfect one) who is accused of stealing a check for £20. It feels, in many ways, like the end of an era the close of a century.Īs is usual with Trollope, he takes his time to set the stage but since most of his novels in the Barsetshire series are not as long as this, the last, one, here he takes triple the amount of time: where he normally needs about a hundred-or-so pages to set the preliminary characters into motion, in The Last Chronicle it takes him nearly three-hundred pages to do so. 'When I see women kiss, I always think that there is a deep hatred at the bottom of it.”And so the long, arduous, fitful, endearing, maddening, and epic-filled Chronicles of Barsetshire are at an end… and it’s a glorious end that my four-star rating can’t truly reflect, unless you’ve read them all in order and in fairly quick succession. (Summary by Steve Gough)įor further information, including links to online text, reader information, RSS feeds, CD cover or other formats (if available), please go to the LibriVox catalog page for this recording.įor more free audio books or to become a volunteer reader, visit .”I know very well that men are friends when they step up and shake hands with each other. The trial is the source of much grief for his long-suffering family, not least his wife Mary and daughter Grace (the novel's romantic heroine), whilst the Reverend Crawley reminds us more and more of a mad King Lear on the heath. LibriVox reader Nicholas Clifford calls this Trollope's best novel in his introduction to the collaborative version of this fine novel - and he is right! A wonderful study of its central character, the proud, irascible, tormented, poverty-stricken clergyman, Josiah Crawley, who pays a heavy price for his human failings when he is brought to trial for the alleged theft of a cheque for twenty pounds.

LibriVox recording of The Last Chronicle of Barset by Anthony Trollope.

Anthony trollope the last chronicle of barset