About this story
You refuse the chaplain's proposal at the close gate, marry the scholar Francis Arabin, and watch the Stanhopes retreat to Carrara and your father decline a deanery. Fifty chapters carry the close from the new masters' arrival to the sofa carried out like a barge and the psalm book going round Hiram's Hospital, hand to hand.
How it opens
The cathedral bell tolled while winter rain darkened every stone in the close.
Old Bishop Grantly had died before his son could inherit more than disappointment.
Septimus HardingThe ministry has named Dr Proudie to Barchester, not the archdeacon.
Choose
Will Archdeacon Grantly lose his position?
What manner of bishop is Dr Proudie?