Barchester Towers

This article needs additional citations for verification. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. Find sources: "Barchester Towers" – news · newspapers · books · scholar · JSTOR (May 2015) (Learn how and when to remove this message)

Barchester Towers

Mrs Proudie speaking to Archdeacon Grantly at their first meeting
Author	Anthony Trollope
Language	English
Series	Chronicles of Barsetshire
Publisher	Longmans
Publication date	1857
Media type	Print
ISBN	978-1-59547745-3
Preceded by	The Warden
Followed by	Doctor Thorne
Text	Barchester Towers at Wikisource

Barchester Towers is a novel by English author Anthony Trollope published by Longmans in 1857. It is the second book in the Chronicles of Barsetshire series, preceded by The Warden and followed by Doctor Thorne. Among other things it satirises the antipathy in the Church of England between High Church and Evangelical adherents. Trollope began writing this book in 1855. He wrote constantly and made himself a writing-desk so he could continue writing while travelling by train. "Pray know that when a man begins writing a book he never gives over", he wrote in a letter during this period. "The evil with which he is beset is as inveterate as drinking – as exciting as gambling".

In his autobiography, Trollope observed "In the writing of Barchester Towers I took great delight. The bishop and Mrs. Proudie were very real to me, as were also the troubles of the archdeacon and the loves of Mr. Slope". When he submitted his finished work, his publisher, William Longman, initially turned it down, finding much of it to be full of "vulgarity and exaggeration".^[1] Recent critics offer a more positive opinion: "Barchester Towers is many readers' favourite Trollope", wrote The Guardian, which included it in its 2009 list of "1000 novels everyone must read".^[2]