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The Complete Barchester Chronicles by Anthony Trollope (view source)
Revision as of 16:11, 10 December 2020
, 16:11, 10 December 2020no edit summary
The six books are ''The Warden'', ''Barchester Towers'','' Doctor Thorne'', ''Framley Parsonage'', ''The Small House at Allington'' and ''The Last Chronicle of Barset''. ''The Warden'' was published in 1855. The first of the Austen novels - ''Sense and Sensibility'' was published in 1811, so there's almost half a century's gap between the two writers but both deliver a gentle satire on life at the time with an element of romance.
The characterisation is superb even if some of the attitudes seem rather strange in the twenty-first century. Who can forget the almost too honourable but rather naive Septimus Harding, the titular warden? Lily Dale from ''The Small House at Allington'' is too constant to the lover who let her down. When the Rev Matthew Josiah Crawley is accused of theft his daughter feels that she cannot hope to marry until such time as her father's name is cleared for fear of bringing shame to the family of the man she loves. Mrs Proudie, the bishop's wife, is a thread which runs through the books and she's a monster.
The cast includes Anna Massey, Alex Jennings, David Haig, Rosemary Leach, Kenneth Cranham, Emma Fielding and Brenda Blethyn. I have heard Brenda Blethyn described as 'annoying'' in the series but I didn't find this to be the case.