Barsetshire novels

novels by Trollope

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Article History

Barsetshire novels, a series of six connected novels by Anthony Trollope set in the fictional west England county of Barset.

Trollope prided himself on the scope and detail with which he imagined the geography, history, and social structure of his fictional county. Nevertheless, character interested him more than description, and many characters appear in more than one Barset novel. The Reverend Septimus Harding, whose moral dilemma is the central story of The Warden (1855), reappears amid the ecclesiastical disputes of Barchester Towers (1857). The kindly title character of Doctor Thorne (1858), whose adopted daughter wins a husband in the novel, himself weds a wealthy patent medicine heiress in Framley Parsonage (1861), a novel largely concerned with the financial scrapes of young vicar Mark Robarts. Many characters from preceding novels, including Lily Dale, whose broken engagement is the principal story of The Small House at Allington (1864), reappear in The Last Chronicle of Barset (1867). Of his 47 novels, Trollope considered The Last Chronicle his finest.

This article was most recently revised and updated by Kathleen Kuiper.