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The Last Chronicle of Barset

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The Last Chronicle of Barset

By: Anthony Trollope
Narrated by: Simon Vance
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Anthony Trollope's Barsetshire novels are well loved for their wit, satire, and keen perceptions of human nature. This final installment brings back some of his best loved characters: Major Henry Grantly, first met as a boy in The Warden, the sparkling Lily Dale and her thwarted lover, Johnny Eames, and the domineering Mrs. Proudie.

Barsetshire's latest scandal involves Mr. Crawley, the impoverished curate of Hogglestock, accused of theft when he uses a large check to pay off his debts. Unable to remember how he came by the money, he feels ashamed and even begins to question his own sanity. The scandal fiercely divides the citizens of Barsetshire and threatens to tear apart Mr. Crawley's family. Trollope offers a devastating portrait of a man oppressed by poverty, social humiliation, and self-doubt.

(P)2007 Blackstone Audio, Inc. Classics Fiction Genre Fiction Literary Fiction
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Critic reviews

“I regard this as the best novel I have written…there is a true savour of English life all through the book…I claim to have portrayed the mind of the unfortunate man with great accuracy and great delicacy.”

(Anthony Trollope)

“[A] brilliant depicter of the nineteenth-century social strata in England.”

(New York Times)

“The Last Chronicle of Barset is a satirical view of a materialistic society…with elaborate complications.”

(The Merriam-Webster Encyclopedia of Literature)
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Most relevant
Mainly competent but still with voice choices that go against the novel. Mrs Crawley should not have contorted vowels that place her a social class below her husband given that Trollope repeats again and again that she is a lady, born to gentility and comfort, brought to poverty and hardship only by the eccentric approach to life of her husband and bad luck. And whilst she is entitled to be depressed, the subservient whine he gives her irritates rather than inducing sympathy. Similarly, Grace, supposedly the best educated girl in Barsetshire, whose quality shines forth to everyone who meets her, should not speak more sloppily than other non-wealthy clerical family aspirants to county respectability. We might think (I do) that accent should not indicate worth, but that is not what the Victorians thought, not the novel that Trollope wrote, and crucially, not Simon Vance's general interpretation, with many of his voices apparently taken from the 1950's Redgrave/Edith Evans 'Importance of being Earnest'. He also gives Mark Robarts a completely different voice from the one he had in 'Framley Parsonage'. I've stuck with it because there is no British alternative, and listening to books I know is the best substitute I can find for now impossible bedtime reading. If you don't know the novels the mainly competent readings may not annoy you. If you do, or if you simply listen closely to what Trollope says, you may, like me, put up with it only for want of an alternative British reader more attentive to the text.

Final episode in sometimes perverse reading

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