The best known group of novels is that dealing with the society of the city of Barchester and of the surrounding neighbourhood. The Chronicles of Barsetshire, as they have been called, are six in number:
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).
Although these famous stories undoubtedly contain much of Trollope's best work, they do not contain the whole of it. It is a mistake to suppose that they rank altogether higher than his other books, and one of the most disastrous results of the disfavour into which his novels fell after their author's death is that a wealth of really first-rate material, just because it is included in books of which the late eighties chose to forget the titles, lies hidden to-day and withdrawn from the enjoyment of modern readers.
Cases of such unmerited neglect are encountered immediately and among the novels of Trollope's second continuous and interconnected series. The “political” stories, like those of Barsetshire, are six in number:
Can You Forgive Her? (1864),