Everyman Trollope Series

Barchester Towers

by Anthony Trollope

Published 1 May 1857

"I never saw anything like you clergymen … you are always thinking of fighting each other"

After the death of old Dr Grantly, a bitter struggle begins over who will succeed him as Bishop of Barchester. And when the decision is finally made to appoint the evangelical Dr Proudie, rather than the son of the old bishop, Archdeacon Grantly, resentment and suspicion threaten to cause deep divisions within the diocese. Trollope’s masterly depiction of the plotting and back-stabbing that ensues lies at the heart of one of the most vivid and comic of his Barsetshire novels, peopled by such very different figures as the saintly Warden of Hiram’s Hospital, Septimus Harding, the ineffectual but well-meaning new bishop and his terrifying wife, and the oily chaplain Mr Slope who has designs both on Mr Harding’s daughter and the fascinating would-be femme fatale Signora Vesey-Neroni.

This is the second volume of Trollope’s Chronicles of Barsetshire. In his introduction, Robin Gilmour examines the novel’s political and social background and Trollope’s concern with changes occurring in society. This edition also includes a preface by J. K. Galbraith.

For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.

He Knew He Was Right

by Anthony Trollope

Published November 1978

Louis Trevelyan seems the most fortunate of mid-Victorian gentlemen: young, rich, well-educated, handsome, and with a beautiful wife. But his life is ruined by ungrounded jealousy. In the later mad scenes, in which the unlucky hero has been utterly consumed by an obsession with his wife's imaginary infidelity, Trollope's writing reaches a Shakespearian pitch unmatched anywhere else in his vast fictional output. In the sub-plot dealing with the marriages of his English and American heroines, Trollope engages head-on the issue of women's rights. And in the person of Miss Jemima Stanbury, the virtuous dragon of Exeter Cathedral Close, Trollope created one of his most notable comic characters.

The Warden

by Anthony Trollope

Published December 1955

The first of Trollope’s popular Barsetshire novels, set in the fictional cathedral town of Barchester, The Warden centers on the honorable cleric Septimus Harding, one of Trollope’s most memorable characters. When Harding is accused of mismanaging church funds, his predicament lays bare the complexities of the Victorian world and of nineteenth-century provincial life. And, as Louis Auchincloss observes in his Introduction, “The theme of The Warden presents the kind of social problem that always fascinated Trollope: the inevitable clash of ancient privilege with modern social awareness.”

For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.

The Eustace Diamonds

by Anthony Trollope

Published December 1950

The central plot of "The Eustace Diamonds" (1872) involves the theft and ultimate discovery of a diamond necklace - the Eustace family heirloom. A splendid sense of the absurd permeates the novel and allows Trollope to examine "truth" in may contexts and at many levels of seriousness. Lizzie's unscrupulous lies do not prevent her final exposure, and it is, as Stephen Gill says in his Introduction, "this honesty, this clarity of vision that places Trollope with the greatest social novelists of the nineteenth century, with Dickens, Thackeray, and George Eliot."

Can You Forgive Her?

by Anthony Trollope

Published 1 September 1864

Anthony Trollope's stock-in-trade was the life of the great drawing rooms of mid-Victorian England, where the thirst for wealth and political power and the need for love continually formed and reformed in unexpected, illuminating combinations. Can You Forgive Her?, the story of Alice Vavasor, her conundrums in love, and her confusions about the rights and duties of a modern, is the first novel in his magnificent Palliser series; it is energized on every page by the affectionate and ironicdelight Trollope felt in observing the entanglements of his splendid characters.

For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.

Framley Parsonage

by Anthony Trollope

Published December 1947

Mark Robarts is a clergyman with ambitions beyond his small country parish of Framley. In a naive attempt to mix in influential circles, he agrees to guarantee a bill for a large sum of money for the disreputable local Member of Parliament, while being helped in his career in the Church by the same hand. But the unscrupulous politician reneges on his financial obligations, and Mark must face the consequences this debt may bring to his family. One of Trollope's most enduringly popular novels since it appeared in 1860, Framley Parsonage is an evocative depiction of country life in nineteenth-century England, told with great compassion and acute insight into human nature.

Way We Live Now

by Anthony Trollope

Published March 1969

The Way We Live Now is both a satire of the literary world of London in the 1870s and a bold indictment of the new power of speculative finance in English life. Trollope is described as the quintessential Victorian novelist.