The Warden (Penguin Classics)

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In the early 1990s, interest in Trollope increased. A Trollope Society flourishes in the United Kingdom, as does its sister society in the United States. [78] In 2011, the University of Kansas's Department of English, in collaboration with the Hall Center for the Humanities and in partnership with The Fortnightly Review, began awarding an annual Trollope Prize. The Prize was established to focus attention on Trollope's work and career. Mr. Harding’s warmest admirers cannot say that he was ever an industrious man; the circumstances of his life have not called on him to be so; and yet he can hardly be called an idler. Since his appointment to his precentorship, he has published, with all possible additions of vellum, typography, and gilding, a collection of our ancient church music, with some correct dissertations on Purcell, Crotch, and Nares. He has greatly improved the choir of Barchester, which, under his dominion, now rivals that of any cathedral in England. He has taken something more than his fair share in the cathedral services, and has played the violoncello daily to such audiences as he could collect, or, faute de mieux, to no audience at all.

Septimus Harding, the quiet, music-loving Warden of Hiram's Hospital, a widower who has two daughters and is also the precentor of Barchester Cathedral. He becomes the centre of a dispute concerning his substantial income as the hospital's warden.Instead, he tells a charming story—one with mixed but sympathetic characters, using a narrator who employs gentle irony to undercut “cant,” the Victorian word for fashionable self-righteousness, wherever he finds it. a b c Turner, Mark W. (23 December 2010), "Trollope's Literary Life and Times", The Cambridge Companion to Anthony Trollope, Cambridge University Press, pp.6–16, doi: 10.1017/ccol9780521886369.002, ISBN 978-0-521-88636-9 , retrieved 31 October 2020 As readers, we have come to know — and love — him for this very human, very illogical, way of handling difficult moments. However, Trollope's greatest literary success, based on copies sold, came in the third Barsetshire instalment, Doctor Thorne. [20] It was published by Chapman & Hall in 1858. [23] Trollope credited his brother Tom for developing the storyline. [20] Some authors appear to be able to write at any time and in any place. Anthony Trollope did much writing in a railway train." – Andrews, William (1898). Literary Byways, Williams Andrews & Co., pp. 22–23.

The Warden‘s cast of characters includes, of course, Mr. Harding himself, as well as Archdeacon Grantly, his assertive authoritative son-in-law with a high church position; Eleanor Bold, Mr. Harding’s young unmarried daughter, a lady with a loving heart but a fine sense of justice; and John Bold, the young Barchester physician who hankers to reform all injustice wherever he finds it–as well as to marry Mr. Harding’s daughter.Craig, Amanda (30 April 2009). "Book of a Lifetime, The Way We Live Now by Anthony Trollope". independent.co.uk. Lewis, Monica C. (2010). "Anthony Trollope and the Voicing of Victorian Fiction," Nineteenth-Century Literature, Vol. 65, No. 2, p. 141. Kennedy, John Dorrance (1975). Trollope's Widows, Beyond the Stereotypes of Maiden and Wife, (PhD Dissertation), University of Florida. Stanford, Jane, 'That Irishman: The Life and Times of John O'Connor Power', Part Three, 'The Fenian is the Artist', pp. 123–124, The History Press Ireland, May 2011, ISBN 978-1-84588-698-1 Allen, W. (1991) [1954]. The English Novel, London: Penguin, in Pérez Pérez, Miguel Ángel (1999). "The Un-Trollopian Trollope: Some Notes on the Barsetshire Novels". Revista Alicantina de Estudios Ingles. 12: 127–142 – via RUA.

Both friends and enemies alike urge him to stay where he is, but he cannot live with the thought that the money which provides his generous income might rightly belong to the twelve paupers whose care is his raison d’etre as warden.Mr. Harding is the elderly warden of Hiram’s Hospital, a charity home established more than 400 years earlier for a dozen aged laborers no longer able to earn their daily bread. What famous novelist, in this same novel, faulted popular storytellers for creating blind emotion and simplistic portrayals of “good” or “bad” people?

Party leaders apparently took advantage of Trollope's eagerness to stand, and of his willingness to spend money on a campaign. [43] Beverley had a long history of vote-buying and of intimidation by employers and others. Every election since 1857 had been followed by an election petition alleging corruption, and it was estimated that 300 of the 1,100 voters in 1868 would sell their votes. [46] The task of a Liberal candidate was not to win the election, but to give the Conservative candidates an opportunity to display overt corruption, which could then be used to disqualify them. [44] In the mid nineteenth century there were a number of financial scandals in the Church of England including those of Rochester, where the endowments which should have supported the King’s School Canterbury had been diverted to the Dean and Chapter; and of the hospital of St Cross at Winchester where the Rev. Francis North, later the Earl of Guildford, had been appointed to the mastership of the hospital by his father the bishop. The revenues of the hospital were very considerable, the work involved minimal. The scandal soon broke. A series was not planned when Trollope began writing The Warden. [3] Rather, after creating Barsetshire, he found himself returning to it as the setting for his following works. [3] It was not until 1878, 11 years after The Last Chronicle of Barset, that these six novels were collectively published as the Chronicles of Barset. Trollope died in Marylebone, London, in 1882 [58] and is buried in Kensal Green Cemetery, near the grave of his contemporary, Wilkie Collins.Bold also is going to London. When he arrives there, he meets with Tom Towers and asks him not to print any more editorials about the Barchester situation. Towers says that he cannot be responsible for the attitude of The Jupiter. Bold then goes to the offices of his lawyer and tells him to drop the suit. The lawyer sends word to Sir Abraham. As the time for Mr. Harding’s departure from Hiram’s Hospital draws near, he calls in all the residents and has a last talk with them. They are disturbed—even those who petitioned the bishop—for they know that they are being deprived of a friendly and sympathetic warden. Hi CorrinaRose. In The Warden, Trollope is using a story-telling convention common in the 19th century, and still in use today–as you mention, his narrator in the work is Third Person Omniscient. The narrative voice is not a character in the story, per se, but the voice is so personable, the narrator does become a character in its own right–not someone who is part of the story, but someone who seems to know everything that happens to all the characters in the narrative, and who forms a friendly relationship directly with readers to tell us all about it. So yes, we assume the narrator voice is a first-hand witness, not just of events but also of the thoughts of many of the characters. The Chronicles of Barsetshire are widely regarded as Anthony Trollope's most famous literary works. [4] [29] In 1867, following the release of The Last Chronicle of Barset, a writer for The Examiner called these novels "the best set of sequels in our literature". [30] Even today, these works remain his most popular. Modern critic Arthur Pollard writes: "Trollope is and will remain best known for his Barsetshire series", [4] while P. D. Edwards offers a similar insight: "During his own lifetime, and for long afterwards, his reputation rested chiefly on the Barsetshire novels". [29]