Novel
The Warden
Anthony Trollope · 1855
Opening lines
The Rev. Septimus Harding was, a few years since, a beneficed clergyman residing in the cathedral town of ——; let us call it Barchester.
Text quoted from gutenberg.org
Synopsis
The Reverend Harding, precentor of Barchester Cathedral, a gentle man not yet sixty, administers a hospital of twelve aged wool-carders founded in 1434 by a wool merchant. He receives eight hundred pounds a year there and a house, without ever having asked himself where it came from. John Bold, a young surgeon of the town, a reformer in love with Eleanor, Harding's daughter, pores over the founder's will and concludes that the money belongs to the poor. The Jupiter, a great London newspaper, seizes on the affair; Archdeacon Grantly, Harding's son-in-law, intends that they should fight.
Context
The idea came to its author on an inspection tour for the post office: he stayed an hour on a small bridge in Salisbury and fixed the spot where the almshouse was to stand. He began writing more than a year later, in July 1853, and the book appeared in 1855: it is his fourth novel, and the first of the series of the imaginary county of Barset. The subject was topical, and the novel itself names the earl who drew revenues from the hospital of St Cross in Winchester, where thirteen old men lived. The newspaper that leads the campaign is modelled on the Times.
Who it is for
A short novel, the first of the six Barsetshire novels; translated into French in 1947, then in 1992.
Prizes and reception
Its author's first success, which opens the series of novels that remains the best loved of his work.
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