Framley Parsonage, by the Victorian author Anthony Trollope, is the fourth novel in the six-part Chronicles of Barsetshire series. This series is set in the fictional county of Barsetshire in the English countryside and details the social entwinings of the gentry, rich mercantile classes, clergy, and occasionally what we would today refer to as the comfortable middle class. The novels, which can be read in any order, revolve around themes of maintaining social status, finding love, marrying well, and money. Hypocrisy, chicanery, and snobbish attitudes often create dilemmas that Trollope, in a winding but satisfying narrative fashion, concludes as the reader wishes.

Framley Parsonage specifically details the misadventures of the amiable but horribly naive vicar, Mark Robarts, who is a boyhood friend of Lord Ludovic Lufton. Through this friendship, Ludovic’s mother, Lady Lufton, installs Robarts in the Framley Parsonage with a sufficient salary to support his young family’s basic needs. Through a misplaced sense of ambition, Robarts attempts to further his standing in life by associating with a parliament member, charlatan, and aptly named Mr. Sowerby, bringing humiliation and disgrace upon himself.

Trollope displays an absolute sense of enjoyment in writing this novel, skewering the political class with an abundance of wit and satire, along with exploring four marriage sub-plots that he resolves with appropriately deserved denouements of happiness or the lack thereof.

Source and Graphic: Framley Parsonage by Anthony Trollope, Publisher Everyman’s Library, 1994.