The Last Chronicle of Barset

Grace Crawley

Grace is the eldest surviving child of the impoverished Crawleys of Hogglestock, raised in a poverty her father feels as disgrace and her mother endures as daily fact. When Major Grantly's attentions make her the talk of Barsetshire, she refuses to accept him while her father stands accused, insisting she will not drag a gentleman's son into her family's shame. Her stubborn integrity—part inheritance, part self-defense—forces everyone around her to choose between social calculation and genuine worth.

Lily Dale

Lily Dale is the niece of Squire Dale of Allington, admired throughout Barsetshire for her wit and her refusal to marry. Having been engaged and abandoned by Adolphus Crosbie, she has built her identity around that wound, telling herself and everyone else that she will never love again. When Mrs. Arabin arrives to plead Johnny Eames's cause, Lily must confront whether her famous constancy is principle or pride—and whether she has the right to keep refusing a man everyone else believes she should accept.

Johnny Eames

Johnny Eames is a young private secretary at the Income Tax Office, risen from humble origins through the patronage of his cousin Lord De Guest. He has loved Lily Dale since childhood and cannot stop, even though she has refused him repeatedly and made clear that her heart is closed. His willingness to risk his position by defying Sir Raffle Buffle to travel to Florence on family business reveals both his impulsive loyalty and his growing willingness to act like a man rather than a boy.

Mr. Crawley

Josiah Crawley has spent ten years in the miserable parish of Hogglestock, earning one hundred and thirty pounds a year and the reputation of a madman among the farmers, though the brickmakers of Hoggle End respect him for living as poorly as they do. He is moody, morose, sometimes barely sane, and utterly incapable of accepting charity or admitting weakness—even to his wife, who has learned to treat him as both patriarch and invalid. His refusal to explain himself when accused of theft sets the entire plot in motion and makes him both victim and author of his family's crisis.

Major Grantly

Henry Grantly is the son of Archdeacon Grantly of Plumstead Episcopi, a man whose family pride is matched only by his dread of scandal. The major has fallen in love with Grace Crawley, the daughter of a clergyman accused of theft, and has decided that he will marry her regardless of the verdict—a decision that puts him at war with his father and makes him the subject of county gossip. His quiet determination to do what he thinks right, even at the cost of his inheritance and his father's respect, makes him the moral counterweight to the novel's many calculations of advantage.

Mrs. Proudie

Mrs. Proudie is the undisputed mistress of the bishop's palace at Barchester, a woman whose energy and certainty make her husband's authority merely nominal. When Mr. Crawley insults her and is accused of theft, she demands that he be prosecuted to the full extent of ecclesiastical law, badgering the bishop into agreeing to a commission of inquiry headed by Dr. Tempest. Her implacable sense of propriety and her conviction that she speaks for the Church make her the novel's most formidable engine of judgment—and its most dangerous.