- Paperback: 336 pages
- Publisher: Oxford Paperbacks; New edition edition (2 April 1998)
- Language English
- ISBN-10: 0192834088
- ISBN-13: 978-0192834089
- Product Dimensions: 19.2 x 13 x 1.8 cm
- Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 380,311 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
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Product Description
Review
"Attractive edition. Ardizzone drawings a plus! Low price much appreciated."--Dale Nelson, Mayville State University
"Attractive and reasonably priced. The concluding notes and who's who are quite useful."--Thomas W. Zelman, College of St. Scholastica
"Attractive and reasonably priced. The concluding notes and who's who are quite useful."--Thomas W. Zelman, College of St. Scholastica
Product Description
"The Warden" centers on Mr. Harding, a clergyman of great personal integrity who is nevertheless in possession of an income from a charity far in excess of the sum devoted to the purposes of the foundation. On discovering this, young John Bold turns his reforming zeal to exposing what he regards as an abuse of privilege, despite the fact that he is in love with Mr. Harding's daughter Eleanor. It was a highly topical novel (a case regarding the misapplication of church funds was the scandalous subject of contemporary debate), but like other great Victorian novelists, Trollope uses the specific case to explore and illuminate the universal complexities of human motivation and social morality
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THE Rev. Septimus Harding was, a few years since, a beneficed clergyman residing in the cathedral town of-; let us call it Barchester. Read the first page
Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Back Cover
THE Rev. Septimus Harding was, a few years since, a beneficed clergyman residing in the cathedral town of-; let us call it Barchester. Read the first page
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
17 of 19 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
This is the first novel in the Barsetshire sequence, in which Trollope introduces us to the titular Warden, Mr Harding, and his circle. His elder daughter is married to the son of his old friend the Archbishop, who is paranoid about the authority of the Church being undermined. Thus, when the Warden's younger daughter falls for a man who is investigating whether the Warden is entitled to his stipend from the Wardenship, much intrigue ensues.
The novel is basically simple and straightforward, focussing on a small number of well-drawn characters. Trollope presents his characters in a realistic manner, far removed from the overt sentimentality of Charles Dickens, who is lampooned under the name Mr Popular Sentiment. In place of this sentimentality, Trollope gives us warmth and humour, allowing us to enter into the lives of these people, always aware that there are few people so bad as to be without a spark of good, nor so good as to be without a suspicion of ill-humour. Nevertheless, the Warden himself is mostly a sincere, upright man, entirely without the deviousness which often characterises such people in novels of this period.
This is a short novel, but it opens the world of Barsetshire - a welcoming world full of human, and humane, people.
3 of 4 people found the following review helpful
Format:Kindle Edition
I am thoroughly enjoying my rediscovery of Trollope but I am getting irritated by frequent silly mis-prints in Barchester Towers.
2 of 3 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
For many years, the kindly and unambitious Rev. Septimus Harding has been warden of Hiram's Hospital, a residence for poor men who have nowhere else to go, a place where they may live comfortably, get a small stipend from the estate of Mr. Hiram, and live out their lives in peace. The warden has also been living at peace, until John Bold, a young reformer, questions why Mr. Harding, as warden, gets eight hundred pounds a year for accepting the title of warden, which does not require him to do much else. The bedesmen living in the hospital get only shillings, and Bold wonders whether the real intentions of Hiram's bequest to establish the hospital more than four hundred years ago, are being honored in the present.
In this first of the Barsetshire Chronicles, published in 1855, Trollope establishes the gently satiric tone and mood which pervade the series. Here he focuses largely on the church, its clergymen, and their roles in society, showing Rev. Harding to be a man of honor and trust (though a bit too comfortable and unimaginative to ask the hard questions) and contrasting him with Archdeacon Grantly, his son-in-law, who enjoys the power and perks of his position and feels that the world owes him whatever what he can get from it. The stultifying church hierarchy sees its role as almost royal, above the fray and dedicated to sustaining itself.
The conflict which arises when John Bold and Tom Towers, an arrogant newspaperman, become allies in the investigation of the warden's position becomes even stronger when some of the bedesmen are encouraged to demand one hundred pounds a year. Rev. Harding becomes the humiliated subject of editorials, pamphlets, and even a novel showing the "abuses" of his power. Dr. Pessimist Anticant, the pamphleteer, is thought to be a parody of Thomas Carlyle, and the novelist, Mr. Popular Sentiment, is thought to be Charles Dickens. The fact that John Bold, who started it all, is in love with the warden's daughter creates further complications.
Trollope is a delightful writer whose style is to entertain the reader while raising some thoughtful questions. Though he takes his writing seriously and creates memorable characters behaving, as a rule, like real people, he does not take himself seriously, nor does he feel the need to be a social reformer. His humor and amiability give a freshness to novels like this one, which, despite its age, is amusing and perceptive. His later novels, like The Way We Live Now, are far more complex--but just as much fun. n Mary Whipple
In this first of the Barsetshire Chronicles, published in 1855, Trollope establishes the gently satiric tone and mood which pervade the series. Here he focuses largely on the church, its clergymen, and their roles in society, showing Rev. Harding to be a man of honor and trust (though a bit too comfortable and unimaginative to ask the hard questions) and contrasting him with Archdeacon Grantly, his son-in-law, who enjoys the power and perks of his position and feels that the world owes him whatever what he can get from it. The stultifying church hierarchy sees its role as almost royal, above the fray and dedicated to sustaining itself.
The conflict which arises when John Bold and Tom Towers, an arrogant newspaperman, become allies in the investigation of the warden's position becomes even stronger when some of the bedesmen are encouraged to demand one hundred pounds a year. Rev. Harding becomes the humiliated subject of editorials, pamphlets, and even a novel showing the "abuses" of his power. Dr. Pessimist Anticant, the pamphleteer, is thought to be a parody of Thomas Carlyle, and the novelist, Mr. Popular Sentiment, is thought to be Charles Dickens. The fact that John Bold, who started it all, is in love with the warden's daughter creates further complications.
Trollope is a delightful writer whose style is to entertain the reader while raising some thoughtful questions. Though he takes his writing seriously and creates memorable characters behaving, as a rule, like real people, he does not take himself seriously, nor does he feel the need to be a social reformer. His humor and amiability give a freshness to novels like this one, which, despite its age, is amusing and perceptive. His later novels, like The Way We Live Now, are far more complex--but just as much fun. n Mary Whipple
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