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81 of 84 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
It was the beginning of an wonderful adventure . . ., March 10, 2000
I first read Anthony Trollope's book "The Warden" in 1995 at the age of 54; three years later I had finished all forty-seven Trollope novels, his autobiography, and most of his short stories. "The Warden" provides a necessary introduction to the Barsetshire Novels, which, in turn, provide a marvelous introduction to rural Victorian society, and its religious, political, and social underpinnings. However, "The Warden" is a small literary masterpiece of its own, even though the more popular "Barchester Towers" tends to obscure it. "The Warden" moves slowly, of course, but so did Victorian England; soon the reader is enveloped in a rich world of brilliantly created characters: in the moral dilemma of a charming and innocent man, Reverend Septimus Harding, who is probably the most beloved of all Trollope's characters; in the connivings of Archdeacon Grantly, who will become a significant force in the later Barsetshire novels; in Eleanor, an example of the perfect Victorian woman, a type that appears in many of Trollope's subsequent novels; and in the sanctimonious meddling of John Bold, whose crusade for fairness throws the town into turmoil. In modern terminology, "The Warden" is a "good read" for those readers with patience, a love of 19th century England, and an appreciation of literary style. Trollope's sentences have a truly musical cadence. "The Warden" was Trollope's fourth novel and his first truly successful one. It provides a strong introduction to the other five novels of the Barsetshire series, where the reader will meet a group of fascinating characters, including the Mrs. Proudie (one of Trollope's finest creations), the Reverend Obadiah Slope, and the Grantly family. The reader will soon find that Trollope's well-developed characters soon become "friends," and that the small cathedral town of Barchester becomes a very familiar and fascinating world in itself. It is a wonderful trip through these six novels. (I read all six in about three weeks.) But one must begin with "The Warden." Brew a cup of tea, toast a scone on a quiet evening, and begin the wonderful voyage through Trollope's charming Barchester. When you have finished the six novels, you may, like me, want to commence reading the Palliser series (another six novels) and follow Plantagenet and Glencora Palliser through their triumphs and travails! However, that remains another story.
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30 of 30 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Classic of victorian fiction, slightly dated by modern standards, August 6, 2010
This is the first of Anthony Trollope's "Chronicles of Barsetshire" novels, and his first popularly successful novel. The basic plot is that the Warden, Mr. Harding, has 1) a sinecure church position that pays him 800 pounds a year; 2) a reform-minded friend who's trying to abolish church sinecures; 3) a daughter who wants to marry the reform-minded friend; and 4) an existing son-in-law of an Archdeacon who takes defending the Rights of the Church very, very seriously. If you like Jane Austen novels there's a good chance you'll like this, as the basic plots -- church livings, the marriage prospects of 19th-centry british gentry -- are fairly similar. Trollope's prose here is fairly light and clear, and if not quite as sharply witty as Austen's, no one else's prose is either. Trollope does spill a great deal of ink on lengthy asides to the reader, some of which paint interesting pictures of contemporary British culture and some of which modern readers may find *amazingly* skippable. Overall, this one's a lightly pleasant example of precisely the sort of intelligent, Victorian parlor romance it's trying to be. If you like this, the next volume in sequence is Barchester Towers; it's a bit more comically satirical, somewhere in between this and P.G. Wodehouse, but almost certainly something you'll enjoy if you liked this one.
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18 of 18 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
The story of a righteous man's battle with his conscience., July 8, 1998
In the 15th century, Hiram's Hospital was established as a perpetual charitable home for 12 poor old men, each being replaced at his death. Over the years the income from the property of the estate has increased to the point where the warden of the hospital enjoys a substantial salary. The Rev. Septimus Harding (the Warden), kind, gentle, and conscientious, loves his comfortable position and is loved by the old men under his care - until his life is disrupted by a REFORMER, in the person of young John Bold, who questions the ample income of the warden, while the old men still receive only pennies a day. Bold brings in a solicitor and interests the newspaper The Jupiter (obviously the London Times), which makes the issue a national debate. Although the church stands behind the warden with all its influence, the gentle Mr. Harding himself begins to doubt the propriety of his position. The matter becomes further complicated when Bold and Harding's daughter Eleanor fall in love. This first of the six Barsetshire novels is by far the shortest and concentrates almost exclusively on the main plot. (In fact, Trollope inserts a criticism of the long serial novels of the day, although he later adopted that same mode.) "The Warden" is not so rich in detail or in the extensive cultural ambience of the later novels, but it is an excellent introduction to this deservedly acclaimed series. It introduces many vivid characters who grow and develop delightfully in the later novels.
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