Barchester Towers

A vacant bishopric unsettles Barchester's clerical society, where religious principle and personal ambition are closely entangled.

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Length: 53 chapters
Reading time: About 13 hr 50 min
Words: 197,521

About the book

The old bishop's approaching death makes the timing of a political change intensely interesting to his son, Archdeacon Grantly. The question of succession soon reaches beyond one appointment into the relationships and competing interests of the cathedral town.

Trollope's narrator watches these manoeuvres with amused attention to motives that their owners might prefer to disguise. Church offices, household authority and marriage prospects share the same social world, giving formal disagreements a very personal charge and making conversation a form of competitive action.

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Victorian novels Comic classics

This edition

Text from Standard Ebooks, who proofread and typeset it and dedicate their edition to the public domain. Anthony Trollope died more than 70 years ago, so the work is out of copyright in the UK.