Author Guide · Victorian Fiction
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Anthony Trollope was at his desk at 5.30 every morning with his watch in front of him, and he expected 250 words of himself every quarter of an hour. Until 1867 he also held a full-time job at the Post Office, which sent him to Ireland in 1841 and to the Channel Islands in 1852, where he recommended the first pillar boxes. The routine produced 47 novels, among them the six Barsetshire novels about a cathedral town and its clergy, the six Palliser novels about Parliament, and The Way We Live Now (1875), a satire on a financial fraud. When An Autobiography (1883) revealed after his death how he worked, and that he wrote for money, his reputation with critics fell for decades. This guide covers his 14 key books, in order, and where to begin.
By Lisanne Swart · 14 key books · 1855–1880 · Updated October 2026
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Quick answer
Anthony Trollope wrote 47 novels. The best known are Barchester Towers (1857) and the other Barsetshire novels, from The Warden (1855) to The Last Chronicle of Barset (1867); the Palliser novels, from Can You Forgive Her? (1865) to The Duke’s Children (1880); and The Way We Live Now (1875). Start with Barchester Towers, or with the much shorter The Warden that comes before it; then choose between the church, Parliament and the City.
Where to Start with Anthony Trollope
If you want his best-known novel
→ Barchester Towers (1857) — a new bishop, his wife and his chaplain take over Barchester.
If you want a short way in
→ The Warden (1855) — the first Barsetshire novel, and much shorter than the rest.
If you want money, fraud and satire
→ The Way We Live Now (1875) — a financier with a mysterious past takes London by storm.
If you want politics
→ Phineas Finn (1869) — a young Irishman in Parliament, the best way into the Palliser novels after Can You Forgive Her?.
14 Anthony Trollope Books, in Order
The Warden
Mr Harding, a gentle clergyman, is Warden of Hiram’s Hospital, an almshouse in the cathedral town of Barchester, and draws an income out of all proportion to his duties. The young reformer John Bold, who is in love with Harding’s daughter Eleanor, takes the case to the press, and Harding’s son-in-law Archdeacon Grantly fights back. Trollope conceived the book on a visit to Salisbury in 1852; Longman published it in 1855. It was not a large success, but it brought him more notice than any of his earlier books.
Barchester Towers
A new bishop, Dr Proudie, arrives in Barchester with his domineering wife and his chaplain, Mr Slope, and sets out to change the diocese. The Archdeacon’s party fights them over the wardenship of the hospital, while Slope courts the widowed Eleanor Bold for her money. The BBC adapted it with The Warden as The Barchester Chronicles (1982), with Donald Pleasence as Harding, Geraldine McEwan as Mrs Proudie and Alan Rickman as Slope.
Doctor Thorne
The Greshams of Greshamsbury have mortgaged their estate and need their heir, Frank, to marry money, but Frank loves Mary Thorne, the doctor’s niece, who seems to have none. Only Doctor Thorne knows that Mary is the illegitimate niece of the millionaire Sir Roger Scatcherd. Trollope credited his brother Tom with the plot, and it sold more copies than any of his other books. Julian Fellowes adapted it for ITV in 2016.
Framley Parsonage
Mark Robarts, a young vicar near Barchester, guarantees a loan for the corrupt MP Mr Sowerby and is nearly ruined when Sowerby does not repay it. His sister Lucy refuses Lord Lufton because she knows his mother will not accept her. The novel ran in 16 monthly instalments in the new Cornhill Magazine from January 1860, and brought back Mrs Proudie, Archdeacon Grantly and Doctor Thorne.
Orley Farm
Twenty years after Lady Mason won a lawsuit over a codicil that left Orley Farm to her son, a lawyer finds evidence that the codicil was forged, and she is tried for perjury. It came out in monthly parts from 1861 to 1862, with 40 illustrations by John Everett Millais. George Orwell called the trial “one of the most brilliant descriptions of a lawsuit in English fiction”; Trollope thought the plot gave away its secret too early.
The Small House at Allington
Lily Dale lives with her widowed mother and sister in the small house on her uncle’s estate. Adolphus Crosbie proposes to her, then drops her for an earl’s daughter, Lady Alexandrina de Courcy, while Johnny Eames, who has loved Lily for years, gets nowhere. Serialised in the Cornhill from 1862 to 1864; a reviewer in The Saturday Review compared Trollope to Jane Austen.
Can You Forgive Her?
Alice Vavasor breaks her engagement to the steady John Grey and goes back to her reckless cousin George, who wants her money for his campaigns for Parliament. Alongside her, Lady Glencora, newly married to the dry, hardworking politician Plantagenet Palliser, is tempted to elope with the penniless Burgo Fitzgerald. Readers lost patience with Alice: Punch called the book “Can You Stand Her?”. The first of the six Palliser novels.
The Last Chronicle of Barset
The Reverend Josiah Crawley, a proud and very poor clergyman, is accused of stealing a cheque, and the whole of Barsetshire takes sides. Major Grantly wants to marry Crawley’s daughter Grace against his father’s wishes, Mr Harding dies, and so does Mrs Proudie. Trollope modelled Crawley partly on his own father, and wrote in An Autobiography: “Taking it as a whole, I regard this as the best novel I have written.”
Phineas Finn
Phineas Finn, a doctor’s son from Killaloe, wins an Irish seat for the Liberals and makes his way in London through the drawing rooms of Lady Laura Standish and Violet Effingham, a duel and a junior post in government, and ends by going back to Ireland as a poor-law inspector in Cork. Madame Max Goesler appears for the first time. It ran in St Paul’s Magazine, which Trollope edited, with illustrations by Millais; Mr Gresham is commonly identified with Gladstone and Mr Daubeny with Disraeli.
He Knew He Was Right
Louis Trevelyan forbids his wife Emily to see Colonel Osborne, an old friend of her father’s; she refuses to admit she has done anything wrong, and his jealousy grows into madness, until he takes their son to Italy. Trollope drew on Othello, and set comic subplots in Exeter around the formidable Miss Stanbury. It is his longest novel and earned him his largest fee, £3,200. Andrew Davies adapted it for BBC One in 2004.
The Eustace Diamonds
Lizzie Eustace, a young widow and a gifted liar, refuses to give back a diamond necklace that belongs to her late husband’s family, and when it is stolen she lies about that too. Trollope said he was inspired by sensation fiction, especially Wilkie Collins’s The Moonstone. It ran in the Fortnightly Review and was a popular success after several commercial failures; the Pallisers mostly watch from the side.
The Way We Live Now
Augustus Melmotte, a financier with an obscure past, arrives in London, raises money for a railway from Salt Lake City to Veracruz that will never be built, and is courted by aristocrats, while the impoverished Sir Felix Carbury chases his daughter Marie for her fortune. Trollope wrote it in 1873, back from Australia and appalled by the financial scandals of the time. It sold poorly in monthly parts. The 2001 BBC serial, with David Suchet as Melmotte, won the BAFTA for best drama serial.
The Prime Minister
When neither party can govern alone, a coalition makes Plantagenet Palliser, now Duke of Omnium, Prime Minister, and he is too sensitive to enjoy it, while Glencora entertains on a grand scale. In the second plot Emily Wharton marries the adventurer Ferdinand Lopez against her father’s wishes; his speculations fail and he throws himself under a train at Tenway Junction. Robert Caro called it “the greatest political novel I ever read”.
The Duke’s Children
Glencora has died, the Duke’s government has fallen, and the widowed Palliser has to deal with grown children he barely knows: a daughter in love with a poor man, an heir who loses money at the races and wants to marry an American, and a younger son sent down from Cambridge. Trollope had to cut about a quarter of the manuscript; the full text, reconstructed from the manuscript at Yale by Steven Amarnick, was first published by the Folio Society in 2015.
In What Order to Read Anthony Trollope
Read each series in its own order. The six Barsetshire novels run from The Warden (1855) to The Last Chronicle of Barset (1867), and characters such as Mr Harding, Archdeacon Grantly and Mrs Proudie grow older across them; Doctor Thorne and Framley Parsonage can be read on their own. The six Palliser novels run from Can You Forgive Her? (1865) to The Duke’s Children (1880) and follow Plantagenet Palliser and Lady Glencora through a whole marriage, so they are best read in sequence; Phineas Redux (1874), the fourth, is listed below.
The stand-alone novels, including Orley Farm, He Knew He Was Right and The Way We Live Now, can be read at any point. The two series overlap: the Duke of Omnium and Plantagenet Palliser first appear in Barsetshire novels, and The Small House at Allington introduces Palliser before Can You Forgive Her?.
A reading path
1. The Warden (1855)
2. Barchester Towers (1857)
3. The Way We Live Now (1875)
4. Can You Forgive Her? (1865)
5. Phineas Finn (1869)
Everything Else Anthony Trollope Published
Beyond the 14 key books: 48 more, grouped by kind.
Open a group with the + to see every book in it.
Palliser novels
1
1 book · 1874
- 1874Phineas Reduxthe fourth Palliser novel: Phineas returns to Parliament and is tried for murder
Irish novels
5
5 books · 1847–1883
- 1847The Macdermots of Ballycloranhis first novel
- 1848The Kellys and the O’Kellys
- 1860Castle Richmond
- 1879An Eye for an Eye
- 1883The Landleaguersunfinished at his death
Other novels
27
27 books · 1850–1884
- 1850La Vendée
- 1858The Three Clerks
- 1859The Bertrams
- 1862The Struggles of Brown, Jones and Robinson
- 1863Rachel Ray
- 1865Miss Mackenzie
- 1866The Belton Estate
- 1867The Claverings
- 1867Nina Balatkaset in Prague; published anonymously
- 1868Linda Tressel
- 1870The Vicar of Bullhampton
- 1871Sir Harry Hotspur of Humblethwaite
- 1871Ralph the Heirdraws on his election campaign at Beverley
- 1872The Golden Lion of Granpère
- 1874Harry Heathcote of Gangoil
- 1874Lady Anna
- 1877The American Senatorshares characters with the Barsetshire and Palliser novels
- 1878Is He Popenjoy?
- 1879John Caldigate
- 1879Cousin Henry
- 1881Ayala’s Angel
- 1881Doctor Wortle’s School
- 1882The Fixed Period
- 1882Kept in the Dark
- 1882Marion Fay
- 1883Mr. Scarborough’s Family
- 1884An Old Man’s Lovepublished after his death
Travel books
4
4 books · 1859–1878
Sketches, biography and memoir
7
7 books · 1865–1883
- 1865Hunting Sketches
- 1866Travelling Sketches
- 1866Clergymen of the Church of England
- 1879Thackeraya short life of the novelist
- 1880The Life of Cicero
- 1882Lord Palmerston
- 1883An Autobiographypublished after his death; it describes his working methods and earnings
Short story collections
4
4 books · 1861–1882
- 1861Tales of All Countriesfirst series; a second followed in 1863
- 1867Lotta Schmidt and Other Stories
- 1870An Editor’s Tales
- 1882Why Frau Frohmann Raised Her Prices and Other Stories
The years · 1815–1882
Quick facts about Anthony Trollope
- Known for
- Long, closely observed novels of Victorian England, above all the Barsetshire novels about a cathedral town and its clergy and the Palliser novels about politics and Parliament.
- 1815
- Born in Marylebone, London
- 1841
- Post Office posting to Ireland
- 1868
- Stands for Parliament at Beverley and comes last
- 1882
- Dies in London
- Born
- 24 April 1815, Marylebone, London
- Family
- His mother, Frances Trollope, was a successful novelist and travel writer; his father, a failed barrister, fled to Belgium in 1834 to escape his debts
- Education
- Harrow and Winchester, where he was bullied and unhappy
- Post Office
- 1834–1867: clerk in London, then surveyor in Ireland from 1841 and later in England
- Married
- Rose Heseltine, in 1844; two sons
- Politics
- Stood as a Liberal at Beverley in 1868 and came last of four
- Died
- 6 December 1882, Marylebone, after a stroke; buried at Kensal Green Cemetery
The red mark is 1857: Barchester Towers, the second and best-known Barsetshire novel.
How Anthony Trollope Writes: A Watch on the Desk
Trollope treated writing as a job with a quota. He started writing on long train journeys around Ireland for the Post Office, and later wrote at a fixed time every morning, 250 words to each quarter of an hour. Almost all his novels first appeared in instalments, in monthly parts or in magazines such as the Cornhill, the Fortnightly Review and St Paul’s Magazine, and the long, slowly building plots with several parallel stories suit that form.
His characters carry over from book to book. Mr Harding, Archdeacon Grantly and Mrs Proudie age across the Barsetshire novels; Plantagenet Palliser and Lady Glencora are married through six Palliser novels. In An Autobiography he tells how he overheard two clergymen at his club complaining about Mrs Proudie, and promised them he would go home and kill her before the week was over. He also talks to the reader directly, which Henry James called a “suicidal satisfaction in reminding the reader that the story he was telling was only, after all, make-believe”.
His subjects are money, marriage, inheritance and institutions: a church sinecure in The Warden, a forged codicil in Orley Farm, a railway fraud in The Way We Live Now, the business of forming a government in The Prime Minister. W. H. Auden wrote that of all novelists Trollope best understands the role of money, and George Eliot said she could not have attempted Middlemarch without the example of his Barsetshire novels.
Frequently asked questions about Anthony Trollope’s books
How many books has Anthony Trollope written?
He wrote 47 novels. This page has 14 key novels, from The Warden (1855) to The Duke’s Children (1880), and the other 33 below them: Phineas Redux, five Irish novels and 27 more. He also wrote travel books on the West Indies, North America, Australia and New Zealand and South Africa, a life of Thackeray, a book on Lord Palmerston, short stories and An Autobiography (1883).
What are Anthony Trollope’s books in order?
The 14 key books in order: The Warden (1855), Barchester Towers (1857), Doctor Thorne (1858), Framley Parsonage (1861), Orley Farm (1862), The Small House at Allington (1864), Can You Forgive Her? (1865), The Last Chronicle of Barset (1867), Phineas Finn (1869), He Knew He Was Right (1869), The Eustace Diamonds (1873), The Way We Live Now (1875), The Prime Minister (1876) and The Duke’s Children (1880).
Where should I start with Anthony Trollope?
With Barchester Towers (1857), the most widely read of his novels. It follows The Warden (1855), which is short and sets up the characters, so you can read that first. If you are more interested in money than in the church, start with The Way We Live Now (1875).
What is Anthony Trollope’s most famous book?
Barchester Towers (1857), the second Barsetshire novel, with Mrs Proudie and Mr Slope. The Way We Live Now (1875) is his best-known novel outside the two series.
In what order should I read the Barsetshire novels?
The Warden (1855), Barchester Towers (1857), Doctor Thorne (1858), Framley Parsonage (1861), The Small House at Allington (1864) and The Last Chronicle of Barset (1867). Trollope did not plan a series; he kept returning to Barsetshire, and the six were first published together as the Chronicles of Barset in 1878.
In what order should I read the Palliser novels?
Can You Forgive Her? (1865), Phineas Finn (1869), The Eustace Diamonds (1873), Phineas Redux (1874), The Prime Minister (1876) and The Duke’s Children (1880). Plantagenet Palliser first appears in a Barsetshire novel, The Small House at Allington (1864).
Which Trollope novels have been adapted for television?
The BBC made The Pallisers (1974), 26 episodes written by Simon Raven, with Philip Latham and Susan Hampshire; The Barchester Chronicles (1982), from The Warden and Barchester Towers, with Alan Rickman as Mr Slope; The Way We Live Now (2001), with David Suchet; and He Knew He Was Right (2004). ITV broadcast Julian Fellowes’s Doctor Thorne in 2016.
Did Anthony Trollope invent the pillar box?
He is credited with bringing it to Britain. As a Post Office surveyor he was sent to the Channel Islands, surveyed Jersey in early 1852 and recommended a “letter-receiving pillar”, an idea he may have seen in Paris. He estimated that Jersey needed five and Guernsey four.
Why did An Autobiography damage Trollope’s reputation?
Published in 1883, after his death, it described how he wrote to a fixed daily quota and listed what he had earned from each book. Critics took it as proof that he was a hack who wrote for money rather than from inspiration, and his standing fell for decades, although readers kept reading him; revivals followed in the 1940s, 1960s and 1990s.
Was Anthony Trollope antisemitic?
Critics have discussed how he portrays Jewish or supposedly Jewish characters. In The Prime Minister (1876) the adventurer Ferdinand Lopez is described as “a black Portuguese nameless Jew”, and in The Way We Live Now (1875) the swindler Melmotte’s family is rumoured to be Jewish. Writers disagree on how far these views are the characters’ or Trollope’s own. In Nina Balatka (1867), set in Prague, the hero is an orthodox Jew, Anton Trendellsohn.
Footnotes
- Anthony Trollope — Wikipedia
- Anthony Trollope bibliography — Wikipedia
- Chronicles of Barsetshire — Wikipedia
- Palliser novels — Wikipedia
- The Way We Live Now — The Trollope Society
- Likeness of a Jew — Tablet Magazine, 2012
Bibliography last verified 9 October 2026. Where sources give different first-publication years, this page uses the year in library catalogues or the publisher’s own record.
This list was not put together by a machine.
The notes are all mine,
and the books are all his.
Lisanne x
Written by Lisanne Swart, who has curated reading lists and author guides at lisanneswart.com since 2021.
See more on her personal bookshelf.
“It was my practice to be at my table every morning at 5.30 A.M.; and it was also my practice to allow myself no mercy.”
— Anthony Trollope, An Autobiography (1883)
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