Chronicles of Barsetshire Books in Order

The Chronicles of Barsetshire are six novels set in Trollope's fictional county of Barsetshire and its cathedral city, Barchester: The Warden, Barchester Towers, Doctor Thorne, Framley Parsonage, The Small House at Allington, and The Last Chronicle of Barset. They were not planned as a neat series from the start. Trollope wrote The Warden, found the place and people alive in his mind, and kept going back.

What he found there was rich enough to carry years of stories. Barsetshire is full of clergymen, bishops, archdeacons, doctors, landowners, daughters with little money, sons with too much confidence, and neighbors who know one another's business better than they should. Church appointments matter, but so do dinner invitations, inheritances, engagements, pride, and plain old embarrassment.

The first two books stay close to cathedral politics. The Warden follows Septimus Harding, a gentle clergyman who begins to doubt whether he should keep a well-paid post that may not be just. Barchester Towers then turns the same world into comic warfare after a new bishop arrives, bringing Mrs. Proudie and Mr. Slope with him. From there the series opens out, keeping Barchester in view while allowing new households and new troubles to take over.

Barsetshire feels lived in.

That matters. The pleasure of these books is not only plot, though there is plenty of that, but accumulation. Characters reappear older, sadder, wiser, poorer, married, widowed, or merely more stubborn than before. Doctor Thorne brings in money and illegitimacy. Framley Parsonage adds debt and patronage. The Small House at Allington gives you one of Trollope's most memorable disappointments in love. The Last Chronicle of Barset turns proud poverty and a stolen cheque into something close to tragedy.

The tone is wonderfully mixed. These are funny novels, often very funny, but they are never weightless. Trollope is interested in conscience, the social use of money, the pressures placed on women, and the small humiliations that can shape a life. The county setting helps him because everyone is connected. A bad choice in one book can echo three books later through marriages, friendships, or church preferment.

Nothing in Barsetshire stays private for long.

This is the best place to start if you want Trollope at his warmest and most companionable. The books can be read on their own, but they deepen when read in order, because the county itself becomes the main character. They were later adapted for television in The Barchester Chronicles, and Doctor Thorne received its own adaptation, but the novels still do the fullest job of making Barsetshire feel like a real place you could revisit.