First Impressions: Barchester Towers, Anthony Trollope (1857)

Mr Trollope's new fiction of Barchester Towers is a species of continuation of The Warden, with greater variety of persons and interests, and a little more of a novel story. That, however, is not much, and mainly consists in the marriage of Eleanor Bold, née Harding, now a widow. The larger part, and perhaps the greater interest of the book, turns upon clerical characters and clerical ideas and doings, respecting which Low Church comes in for some hard hits; for as the romantic action consists in the marriage of Eleanor, so the religious action involves the struggles, exposure, and defeat of the new Bishop of Barchester's Low Church chaplain, the Reverend Mr Slope. This worthy is not exactly painted with anger, for indignation is not Mr Trollope's satiric vein; but the pen that delineates him is ever dipped in gall.

In a technical sense, there is greater variety in Barchester Towers than in The Warden, and consequently more of the novel. From this very extension and complexity, it is scarcely so complete or satisfactory a book. The first work was obviously a satire, in which caricature is allowable provided the features of the person or the points of the case are markedly presented. This licence does not extend to the more regular novel, and Mr Trollope has a peculiarity that lessens his power in this direction. His characters are frequently rather abstractions of qualities rather than actual persons. They are rather the made results of skill and thought than the spontaneous productions of genius.... There is some exaggeration, too, in other directions than mere satire. All religious parties are represented... there is also an easy-going divine without religion, with two daughters – one only... selfish, but the other, Signora Neroni... is daringly philosophical and desperately wicked. Poor Slope is drawn by her arts into equivocal positions even while pursuing Mrs Bold and her thousand a year.