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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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This last novel in the Chronicles of Barsetshire series involves Mr. Crawley, the impoverished curate of Hogglestock, who is accused of theft when he uses a large check to pay off his debts. The scandal fiercely divides the citizens of Barsetshire and threatens to tear apart Mr. Crawley's family.

©1867 Public Domain (P)2007 Blackstone Audio, Inc. Classics Fiction Genre Fiction Literary Fiction
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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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