Share for friends:

Read The Last Chronicle Of Barset (2002)

The Last Chronicle of Barset (2002)

Online Book

Genre
Rating
4.12 of 5 Votes: 4
Your rating
ISBN
0140437525 (ISBN13: 9780140437522)
Language
English
Publisher
penguin classics

The Last Chronicle Of Barset (2002) - Plot & Excerpts

The Last Chronicle of Barset , last and longest of the Barsetshire Chronicles, is tied together by the central mystery of whether or not Josiah Crawley, curate of Hogglestock, stole a check. One way or another, all of the characters from previous novels become involved in the affair. It also picks up the trailing threads left from The Small House at Allington, and introduces another romance, this one between Grace Crawley and Henry Grantly, son of Archdeacon Grantly (first seen in The Warden).This proved the hardest of the Barsetshire Chronicles to read because it is a little too brilliant. Reading a novel with Josiah Crawley at the center means spending a good portion of the book inside the mind of someone who is severely depressed. It's a sympathetic view, showing all of the external circumstances that led to Crawley's depression, but it's also a merciless look at all the ways he makes it worse for himself and harder for his family. It is exhausting spending time in his head.As with prior novels, this is also apolitical issue, since one of the big issues at the time Trollope wrote was church reform, including the question of the wildly uneven pay scale for clergy, and Trollope puts a human face on some of the abstractions; Crawley works at least as hard as Dr. Grantly and receives a fraction of his salary. As with The Warden, Trollope avoids oversimplifying or coming down too definitely on any given side to the issue. Crawly may be underpaid, but it is not Dr. Grantly's fault, and it is hard to condemn him for enjoying the comforts of his life or for arranging for his family to enjoy them.I admit that I sighed a bit over the Grace-Henry romance. Here was yet another good girl being rejected by the man's parents on the grounds that she wasn't of a sufficiently high class and being ultimately accepted in part because she is a "good" girl who does not push herself forward. The saving grace here, as in prior novels, is the characters. While this is, at heart, the same romance plot used in prior novels, the people involved are very different, making it seem nearly new.The issue of class, contentious since Dr. Thorne is partially resolved at the end of the novel: A "gentleman" is someone who is educated and has the right set of manners, regardless of income and, possibly, even of background. Here, as elsewhere, however, Trollope does not show this as the easy answer: It works for the characters at the end, but there's also no doubting that money helps, nor that Lord Dumbello will always receive more deference from the world at large than Josiah Crawley.The series has been quite a ride. I think only The Warden and Barsetshire Towers are going to go on my reread list, but I am very glad to have read the whole. Trollope is one of the most brilliant creators of character and scene it has been my pleasure to encounter.I'm now wondering if I have the stamina to tackle the Palliser novels.--(1)I started my grand read-and-review of the Barsetshire Chronicles over at The Geek Girl Project. My review of The Warden is up there, as is my review of Barchester Towers. My reviews of Dr. Thorne, Framley Parsonage, and The Small House at Allington were on this blog. It's been fun!Note: This was originally written for my blog, Bookwyrme's Lair. Stop by for more book reviews, photos, and other good stuff.

This is the final installment of Trollope's six-novel portrayal of Anglican clerical life in the 1850's, which in their totality are called the Chronicles of Barset. Up front I should make clear that there's another installment within these chronicles, Barchester Towers, which definitely remains far and away the standout of the series. For that book was Trollope's big lucky strike as a writer -- his vein of gold -- his stroke of pure genius. None of the other five Barchester chronicles, including the subject of this review, has anything to match the rare indescribable hilarity that bursts off its every page. And Towers stands on its own in another sense too, as the one Trollope work anyone can and everyone should read, even if he or she never gets into read anything else this ultra-prolific author wrote. Yet, Barchester Towers notwithstanding, I'm giving The Last Chronicle of Barset five stars too. The author himself considered it his best work. And with contemporary readers it was more popular than had been the earlier novel -- that is, way back in the day, before time and perspective had had a chance to vet Barchester Towers for what it truly is. But the mellower and maturer The Last Chronicle of Barset speaks better for the series as a whole than does Trollope's masterpiece. Its sprawling story features characters whose lives stretch back through all five of the foregoing Barset novels, bringing them on through time to their ultimate, often unexpected destinies. Most notably and shockingly, this includes Mrs Proudie, the bishop's wife whom Barchester Towers had immortalized as Trollope's most entertaining and unforgettable creation. Last Chronicle absorbed me completely. Its story, except for a lesser intrigue involving the artist Dalrymple which struck me as inferior and adventitious filler, transported me consistently and deeply through real-seeming space and time to Trollope's world of comfortable, thoroughly patriarchal clerics and their wives and sweethearts, all mostly kindly in their intent, but entirely secularized in their preoccupations -- much to the dismay of a strange, committedly Christian figure at the story's center, the singularly but dexterously drawn Rev Josiah Crawley. I would by the way recommend reading all the Barset Chronicles in sequence as written, in order to get the most out of this last of the series.

What do You think about The Last Chronicle Of Barset (2002)?

The Warden and The Last Chronicle of Barset make perfect bookends to The Chronicles of Barsetshire. Both focus on a clergyman facing difficult legal circumstances, and on the daughters of those men and the marriage prospects of those daughters. Trollope does in The Last Chronicle what he also did so insightfully in The Warden: a study of character under pressure. In The Warden, Dr. Harding is a mild-mannered, humble, moral man, who struggles between what his conscience tells him is right and what friends and family want him to do. In The Last Chronicle, Mr. Crawley is a over-sensitive, proud, moral man who struggles between what his self-respect will let him do and the pressure to behave as other men do. Interestingly, both make similar choices; but they arrive at those choices by very different lines of thought. The daughters of these men are also a study in contrast. In The Warden, Eleanor is a strong-willed, proud beauty, very loyal to her father. She faces reduced circumstances, but might marry a well-off man, if only he can come around to her point of view. In The Last Chronicle, Grace is a humble, dutiful beauty, very devoted to her father and family. Though in reduced circumstances, she might marry a well-off man, if only her father's name can be cleared and he can stick with her against his family's wishes. In both cases, the daughters reach similar romantic ends, but face different obstacles along the way (internally as well as externally). Altogether, The Last Chronicle of Barset is an extremely satisfying conclusion to the series. Trollope wraps up all his loose ends, and tells a "d-----" good story (as they'd print in the day).
—Jean

When I was at uni and we were due to study this period of English Literature, we discovered that our lecturer loved poetry and must have known nothing about the Victorian novel. We analysed poems in great detail, and he then allocated a novel to each student. We had to write an essay and give a presentation to the class, whilst he did... nothing. Needless to say, attendance got pretty low.We reacted with great drama to our allocated novels. I recall a boy being smug because he got Moll Flanders. Thomas Hardy drove a friend of mine to the verge of desperation. And of course, I will never forget mine, A Journal of the Plague Year.Was Trollope allocated to anyone? I have always associated this author with stories of Anglican clergymen, without actually having read any of his works. Stories with priests have a very different feel -certainly saucier- in Catholic Spanish literature. Where is the fun in a priest who is allowed to marry? La Regenta is the outstanding example of these love stories between posh ladies and ambitious priests, full of guilt, secrecy and sexual tension. None of that here. It feels almost like Jane Austen and in that regard it has been very good. At the start a clergyman is accused of stealing a cheque. He claims it came from a good friend of his, but he denies it and as a result he is put on trial in front of the Magistrates. Everybody, eventually, seems to think that he is guilty, but they excuse him because he is forgetful and excentric, but also devoted to the poor in his parish. This is the main force driving the plot, but there are also a couple of "love stories", mainly Grace's, his daughter, who declines an offer of marriage because of her father's "troubles". Grace is depicted as honourable because she refuses to bring disgrace into the family of the man she loves.The typically British preoccupation with class is everywhere in this novel. The protagonist is heavily in debt because his earnings as a priest do not allow him to support his family. It is inferred that most clergymen have that very vague thing, "a private income". Only recently, in Our Spoons Came from Woolworths, a character believes that only men with a "private income" should have children: a job is not enough, as it is uncertain. Is Trollope trying to denounce the fact that Anglican priests are paid so badly?For me, it is mainly a story about pride -honour, perhaps, for Trollope. At points it feels like every single character is too proud to give way and make allowances. The protagonist, Grace, the Major, his father, Lily Dale, her suitor and so on, they all refuse to compromise and could be thought of as stubborn. In the end it is all well, but this trait is not all that loable, in my view.Ah, I enjoyed the humour presented by diva Miss Demolines in her manipulation of John Eames, who had -literally- a lucky escape.
—Laura

Having just finished "The Last Chronicle of Barset", the concluding sixth volume to Trollope´s Barsetshire cycle, I stand in awe at the skill of the novelist. The book is much bleaker than the preceding five. Here, the intimations of mortality, failure and dishonor are everywhere, and they often portend evil for the characters. I hesitated at writing the word "characters", because having known them through thousands of pages, having lived through their perils, triumphs and defeats, I feel as if thou I had personally known them. Archdeacon Teophilus Grantly, Lady Lufton, Rev. Josiah Crawley, Bishop Proudey and his formidable wife, the Rev. Septimus Harding (one of the most endearing characters in literature), Dr. Thorne and his wife, Mr Thorne of Ullathorne and his sister, the terrible DeCourcys and so many, many more. It is truly a kaleidoscope of small town clerical life in early to mid-Victorian England. We see the characters grow, get married and die, like in real life. Although Dickens has always been thought to be a far greater author than Trollope, Dickens never did author a cycle that along with some duds (particularly "Dr. Thorne") includes real gems (particularly "Barchester Towers", "The Small House at Allington" and "The Last Chronicle of Barset"). People differ about "The Warden". While slighter than the rest in the cycle, it began it and thus must be loved. Trollope's dialogues sparkle, particularly between men and women or in the context of social gatherings. He perfectly captures the lightness that often masks wickedness in such interactions. With a heavy heart I leave my friends of Barsetshire. I now will move on to the Palliser novels, of which I hope to give an account in these pages.
—Antonio Nunez

Write Review

(Review will shown on site after approval)

Read books by author Anthony Trollope

Read books in series chronicles of barsetshire

Read books in category Fiction