The "Chronicles of Barsetshire" is a series of six novels by English author Anthony Trollope, set in the west-country Cathedral city of Barchester.

The beautifully-written epic saga concerns the dealings of the clergy and the gentry, and the political, amatory, and social maneuverings that go on among and between them.

Barsetshire is the county in which the novels take place. The county town and cathedral town is Barchester. Other towns mentioned in the novels include Silverbridge, Hogglestock and Greshamsbury.

Included in this volume:
Book One: The Warden -- Mr Septimus Harding, elderly warden of Hiram's Hospital and Precentor of Barchester Cathedral. The story concerns the impact upon Harding and his circle when a zealous young reformer, John Bold, launches a campaign to expose the disparity in the apportionment of the charity's income between its object, the bedesmen, and its officer, Mr Harding. John Bold embarks on this campaign out of a spirit of public duty despite his romantic involvement with Eleanor and previously cordial relations with Mr Harding...

Book Two: Barchester Towers -- The much loved bishop having died, all expectations are that his son, Archdeacon Grantly, also a clergyman, will gain the office in his place. Instead, owing to the passage of the power of patronage to a new Prime Minister, a newcomer, Bishop Proudie, gains the see. His wife, Mrs Proudie, exercises an undue influence over the new bishop, making herself unpopular with right-thinking members of the clergy and their families...

Book Three: Doctor Thorne -- The romantic problems of Mary Thorne, niece of Doctor Thomas Thorne (a member of a junior branch of the family of Mr Wilfred Thorne who appeared in the previous novel), and Frank Gresham, the only son of the local squire. Major themes of the book are the social pain and exclusion caused by illegitimacy, the nefarious effects of the demon drink, and the difficulties of romantic attachments outside one's social class...

Book Four: Framley Parsonage -- Mark Robarts is a young vicar, newly arrived in the village of Framley in Barsetshire. This "living" has come into his hands through Lady Lufton, the mother of his childhood friend Ludovic, Lord Lufton. Mark has ambitions to further his career and begins to seek connections in the county's high society. He is soon preyed upon by local Member of Parliament Mr Sowerby...

Book Five: The Small House at Allington -- Lily has for a long time been secretly loved by John Eames, a junior clerk at the Income Tax Office, while Bell is in love with the local doctor, James Crofts. The handsome and personable, somewhat mercenary Adolphus Crosbie is introduced into the circle by the squire's nephew, Bernard Dale...

Book Six: The Last Chronicle of Barset -- An indigent but learned clergyman, the Reverend Josiah Crawley, the curate of Hogglestock, as he stands accused of stealing. It also features the courtship of the Rev. Mr Crawley's daughter, Grace, and Major Henry Grantly, son of the wealthy Archdeacon Grantly. The Archdeacon, although allowing that Grace is a lady, doesn't think her of high enough rank or wealth for his widowed son; his position is strengthened by the Reverend Mr Crawley's apparent crime. Almost broken by poverty and trouble, the Reverend Mr Crawley hardly knows himself if he is guilty or not...

These are wonderful, well-written thrilling and vigorous novels!      

In his autobiography, Anthony Trollope called the Palliser Novels--that sprawling epic of Victorian England for which he is justly famous--"the best work of my life," adding "I think Plantagenet Palliser stands more firmly on the ground than any other personage I have created." But as sixteen years separated the first novel from the last, Trollope worried that readers would be unable to approach them as a whole. "Who will even know that they should be so read?" he complained. Solving this problem in particularly splendid fashion, Oxford is now reissuing the Palliser Novels in an elegantly crafted hard-bound set--with acid-free papers and durable binding--that include the wealth of illustrations that first appeared in the Oxford Illustrated Trollope years ago. Now, a whole new generation of readers can enjoy one of nineteenth-century literature's greatest achievements.

While the novels center around the stately politician Plantagenet Palliser, the interest is less in politics than in the lively social scene Trollope creates against a Parliamentary backdrop. His keen eye for the subtleties of character and "great apprehension of the real" impressed contemporary writers from Nathaniel Hawthorne to Henry James, and in the Palliser Novels we find him at his very best. Between the covers of these books we meet a wonderfully rich variety of men and women, among them Alice Vavasor, whose waverings between suitors--and the resulting mess--prompted Trollope to ask Can Your Forgive Her?; the handsome Irish MP Phineas Finn, who grows to maturity as the novels progress; the beautiful enchantress Lizzie Eustace, whose scandalous diamonds are the talk of London high society; Ferdinand Lopez, the unctuous social climber; the elegant and witty Lady Glencora, Plantagenet's wife; and Palliser himself--first as a cabinet aspirant, later as Prime Minister--who is the connecting thread that holds the series together. Along the way we are also introduced to a host of amusing and sharply-drawn characters of less social status who, much like the bumpkins of Shakespeare, offer a distorting yet insightful fun-house mirror to the main action.

Nowhere else did Trollope bring to life in such compelling fashion the teeming world of Victorian society and politics, and nowhere else did he create more memorable and living characters than those who populate these six volumes. As a group the Palliser Novels provide us with the most extensive and telling expose of British life during the period of its greatest prestige.