Quick Take
- Narration: Barnaby Edwards is authoritative and dryly comic, exactly the temperament Trollope’s satirical register demands across 22 hours.
- Themes: Ecclesiastical power struggles, marriage as social strategy, institutional corruption and resistance to change
- Mood: Wry and unhurried, a comedy of manners with genuine satirical bite
- Verdict: The definitive Trollope for most readers, and Edwards’s narration makes the lengthy listening commitment feel like an investment rather than an endurance.
I came to Barchester Towers later than I should have, given that my graduate work touched the Victorian novel constantly without ever landing squarely on Trollope. I was convinced he would be slower than Dickens and less psychologically dense than George Eliot, and in a technical sense both of those assessments are accurate. But what I was not prepared for was how funny he is. Genuinely, wickedly funny in ways that Dickens’s broad comedy never quite achieves and that Eliot’s moral seriousness largely forecloses. I listened to Barnaby Edwards’s narration over the course of two weeks on evening walks, and there were several moments on quiet streets where I laughed out loud at something a Victorian clergyman said about another Victorian clergyman’s ambitions, which is not a sentence I expected to write.
Barchester Towers is the second of Trollope’s Chronicles of Barsetshire, set in the fictional cathedral city where the old bishop’s death has left a vacancy that immediately becomes a battlefield. The new bishop arrives from London, dominated entirely by his wife Mrs. Proudie and advised by the slippery Reverend Slope, and the established Barchester faction, centered on the conservative Archdeacon Grantly and the gentle Mr. Harding, digs in to resist them. Woven through the ecclesiastical maneuvering are several marriage plots, most importantly who the widowed Eleanor Bold will end up with, a question that organizes much of the novel’s comic energy.
Our Take on Barchester Towers
Trollope’s genius in this novel is the management of dramatic irony. He tells you, often directly and with cheerful authorial intrusion, what his characters are thinking about what they are doing and what they refuse to admit. Mrs. Proudie believes she is maintaining standards; she is performing power. Slope believes he is advancing the cause of progress; he is advancing himself. Even the sympathetic characters carry their blind spots. The comedy emerges from the collision of sincerely held self-images with the actual social machinery everyone is operating. A reader in a book club setting described it as a novel that makes the modern reader reflect on the differences between then and now but also, uncomfortably, on the similarities. That discomfort is the point. Trollope’s Barchester is not historical escapism; it is recognizable behavior in period dress.
Why Listen to Barchester Towers
Barnaby Edwards is close to ideal for this material. His voice carries the slightly elevated register that Victorian prose requires without making it feel airless. He has genuine comedic timing, which matters enormously here. Slope’s oily persuasions, Mrs. Proudie’s righteous certainties, and Mr. Harding’s gentle diffidence each get distinct handling without the narration tipping into caricature. At 22 hours, you need a narrator who can sustain engagement through Trollope’s longer set pieces, and Edwards does not flag. This is the kind of novel that rewards the full audio commitment in a way that reading in short evening sessions sometimes fails to capture, because the social world Trollope builds requires sustained immersion to feel real.
What to Watch For in Barchester Towers
Some listeners expecting plot-driven Victorian fiction will find Trollope’s pace deliberately leisurely in the first third. He is a sociologist of Barchester before he is a storyteller of it, and he takes his time establishing the ecology of the place before setting the events in motion. The authorial intrusions, where Trollope speaks directly to the reader about what is happening and why, can surprise listeners accustomed to more invisible narration. They are actually one of the great pleasures of his style, a kind of running commentary from an author who trusts his audience, but they take some adjustment. The marriage plot around Eleanor Bold is also somewhat telegraphed, and Trollope himself acknowledges the reader’s ahead-of-the-character position with amiable candor.
Who Should Listen to Barchester Towers
This is for listeners who love the Victorian novel in its social-comedy register and want something that rewards full attention without being emotionally demanding. It is excellent company for long car trips or consistent evening walks, the kind of listening that builds a world you return to rather than racing through. Readers who loved the BBC dramatization of the Barsetshire novels, or who have enjoyed Trollope’s Palliser series, should begin here. Those looking for plot propulsion above all else may find the investment front-loaded; the pleasures are cumulative rather than immediate. But they are real and lasting pleasures.
Frequently Asked Questions
Do I need to have read The Warden before starting Barchester Towers?
Not strictly. Barchester Towers introduces the setting and major recurring characters in a way that orients new readers, and most Trollope scholars consider it the stronger entry point of the two. That said, The Warden is short and introduces Mr. Harding’s character with more depth, so reading it first adds emotional context for his position in the later novel.
How does Barnaby Edwards handle Mrs. Proudie, who is described as one of literature’s great comic antagonists?
Edwards gives her a clipped, self-certain delivery that captures Trollope’s satirical framing without making her purely cartoonish. She reads as genuinely formidable rather than simply ridiculous, which is exactly right. The comedy comes from her conviction, not from Edwards winking at the audience over her head.
At 22 hours, does the novel have a natural listening rhythm or does it feel like a commitment?
Trollope’s chapter structure creates natural stopping points, and the shifting focus between the ecclesiastical and romantic plotlines gives the listener variety within the session. Most listeners report settling into a comfortable rhythm after the first few hours. Evening walks and long drives are the contexts where it tends to work best.
Is this version from SNR Audio the complete, unabridged text?
The 2025 SNR Audio release narrated by Barnaby Edwards is the full unabridged text at 22 hours and 20 minutes. Be aware that some older Audible editions use different narrators and run significantly shorter, indicating abridgement. Edwards’s version is the one to choose.
