Cover of Barchester Towers by Anthony Trollope Audiobook Barchester Towers
Audiobook · Sovereign

Barchester Towers

Author
Anthony Trollope
Read by
Eloise Fairfax
Language
English
Length
18 hours 32 minutes
ISBN
9781802568875
Published
10 September 2025
Imprint
Sovereign
  • clerical intrigue
  • cathedral town
  • power struggle
  • social satire
  • romantic entanglements
  • Victorian society
  • ecclesiastical politics
  • ambition
  • rivalry
  • English countryside

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Description

Barchester Towers by Anthony Trollope is a witty and incisive novel of provincial life, church politics, and social ambition in Victorian England. Set in the quiet cathedral city of Barchester, the story erupts when a new bishop arrives with his formidable wife and scheming chaplain, Mr. Obadiah Slope, threatening the comfortable order presided over by the gentle clergyman Septimus Harding and his son-in-law Archdeacon Grantly. As alliances shift, scandals brew, and romantic entanglements unfold, Trollope masterfully satirizes hypocrisy, power, and reform within the Church of England. With sharp irony, rich characterizations, and deep human insight, Barchester Towers—the second in the Chronicles of Barsetshire—offers a vivid portrait of a society where morality, tradition, and ambition collide.

Author

Anthony Trollope (1815–1882) spent his days as a Post Office surveyor and his early hours at the novel — a clerk's discipline that produced an English county of clergy and a later London of money. Barchester Towers is the church as weather: preferment, gossip, a bishop's wife. The Way We Live Now is the same eye on speculation and the social lie. He wrote without apology for the method. Church, vote, and marriage sit in the same air.

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