Barchester Towers, Anthony Trollope (1857)

All is not well in the English cathedral town of Barchester. The new bishop and his overbearing wife are imposing a puritanical version of the established religion on the liberal, easy-going cathedral clergy. The previous bishop’s son, Archdeacon Grantly, is fuming. He would have succeeded his father in the bishop’s chair if the Government hadn’t changed just as Bishop Grantly was dying. The new bishop’s wife’s ambitious chaplain is serving her for now, but is determined to become the real bishop in her place. He has decided to overcome the enemy by courting the Archdeacon’s widowed sister-in-law, a beautiful, rich, and innocent young woman. What next! Next, Mr. Stanhope is ordered to return from Italy, where he has been neglecting his Barchester duties for these many years, and with him comes his family, including his charming wastrel son (he informs the Bishop, “”I was a Jew once myself” ) and his femme fatale daughter

If you have the patience for Victorian fiction, this is the funniest of romps. A satirical comedy, it takes on the Church, the political establishment, the cross currents of a parish, the old gentility, and every kind of egotist. It gives us a spirited heroine and a brilliantly heartless enchantress, men who severely underestimate the good sense and powers of women, and a bunch of women who really manage everything, rightly or wrongly as the case may be.

Here is the chaplain proposing to the young widow, who is trying to avoid him: "'Do not ask me to leave you, Mrs. Bold,' said he with an impassioned look, impassioned and sanctified as well, with that sort of look which is not uncommon with gentlemen of Mr. Slope's school, and which may perhaps be called the tender-pious."

Or here is the femme fatale speaking of her daughter to the Bishop: “‘The blood of Tiberius,' said the signora, in all but a whisper; 'the blood of Tiberius flows in her veins. She is the last of the Neros!' The bishop had heard of the last of the Visigoths, and had floating in his brain some indistinct idea of the last of the Mohicans, but to have the last of the Neros thus brought before him for a blessing was very staggering.”

If you can resist this kind of narration, you're much to be pitied. Trollope wrote many novels, but none as amusing as this one.