Barchester Towers

Barchester Towers is a novel by Anthony Trollope, published by Longmans in 1857. It is the second of the six Chronicles of Barsetshire novels and takes up the affairs of Barchester a few years after the events of The Warden.

The much loved bishop of Barchester has died and everyone expects his son, Archdeacon Grantly, to succeed him. The power of patronage has moved to a new prime minister, however, and the see goes to a stranger: the far more Evangelical Bishop Proudie, whose wife takes an active and unwelcome interest in the running of the diocese. Into the confusion that follows comes the bishop's chaplain, Obadiah Slope, a man with an eye on his own advancement, along with the Stanhope family, returning from a long stay in Italy with their own reasons for wanting influence.

Trollope wrote that he took great delight in composing the book and that the bishop and Mrs Proudie were very real to him, and the novel mixes church politics with courtship: who marries Eleanor, who is given the wardenship, and who really controls the bishop's household. In 2009 The Guardian included it in its list of a thousand novels everyone must read.