Start with Can you forgive her?. It is the first of the six, it introduces Plantagenet Palliser and Lady Glencora, and their marriage — cold, dutiful, slowly and unexpectedly earned — is the spine that the other five novels hang from. Read it first and every later political manoeuvre carries private weight. Skip it and Trollope's central couple arrive as furniture.
The honest caveat, and it is a real one: this is the slowest book in the sequence. Its main plot belongs to Alice Vavasor, a heroine many readers find maddening, and Trollope keeps her dithering for several hundred pages. If you stall at the halfway point, do not abandon the series. Go straight to Phineas Finn, the Irish member — a faster, funnier, more sociable novel — and come back to Alice later. You will lose some resonance and no plot.
The order (there is only one)
Publication order and internal chronology are identical here, so unlike Sharpe or the Vorkosigan books there is nothing to argue about. Read:
- Can you forgive her? — Glencora's marriage, Alice's indecision, Trollope's introduction to the political world.
- Phineas Finn, the Irish member — a young Irish MP arrives at Westminster. The best entry point if the first defeats you.
- The Eustace diamonds — a near-standalone comedy about a stolen necklace and a spectacular liar, Lizzie Eustace. Genuinely skippable in plot terms, and the most purely enjoyable book of the six.
- Phineas Redux — the darker return, with a murder trial at its centre. Do not read this before Phineas Finn; it depends on it completely.
- The Prime Minister — Palliser finally reaches the top, and the novel is largely about how badly it suits him. Ferdinand Lopez is one of Trollope's cruellest creations.
- The Duke's Children — the elegiac close, and for many readers the best single novel in the series.
Where the sequence sags
The Prime Minister runs long and its two plots — the coalition government and the Lopez marriage — sit awkwardly together. Most readers find the political half slack and the domestic half devastating. Push through; the payoff is The Duke's Children, which is short by Trollope standards and unusually controlled.
Also worth knowing: for a century The Duke's Children circulated in a version Trollope cut by roughly a fifth at his publisher's insistence. A restored full-length edition now exists. Either serves, but if you have enjoyed the other five, the restored text is the better ending.
Do you need the Barsetshire novels first?
No. The Palliser sequence is self-contained and political rather than clerical. Chronicles of Barsetshire is the other great Trollope series and shares almost nothing beyond a couple of walk-on names. Read whichever suits your appetite; a great many readers start here and never regret it.
Where to stop
If six Victorian doorstops is more than you want, the defensible short course is Can you forgive her?, then Phineas Finn, the Irish member, then The Duke's Children. You get the marriage, the parliamentary world and the ending, and you drop the necklace comedy and the trial. It is not the full experience, but it is a coherent one — and it is far better than starting the series and quitting at book two.
If long serial fiction suits you, the same reading logic applies to other multi-volume sequences on the site — see The Sharpe novels for a series where the order genuinely is contested.
Follow the full ordered path here: The Palliser Novels Reading Order and Guide.
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