Going to Barsetshire

Angela Thirkell, known to many American Angliphiles, is the author of twenty-nine novels written between 1933 and 1961. They are set in Barsetshire, the fictional English county made famous by Anthony Trollope, and many of the characters are “descendants” of Trollope’s characters. “Going to Barsetshire” provides a list of the hundreds of characters, many of them recurring, and includes a lengthy glossary of possibly unfamiliar English usages. It also gives the referants for many of the literary allusions with which the books are peppered. Individually, the Thirkell novels have been described as a cross between Barbara Pym and PG Wodehouse; they are amusing and sensitive accounts of upper-class country and village life. Taken as a whole, the series gives a portrait of English life before, during, and after the war, and depicts at some length the many social changes that occurred during that period.