The Warden - Anthony Trollope

The Warden is the first of Anthony Trollope’s six Barchester novels, and epitomizes the wit, charm and acute social observation that he brings to the series.

Septimus Harding is an unworldly, cello-playing clergyman, beloved by the pensioners of Barchester’s almshouse, of which he is Warden. But when ecclesiastical and political skulduggery engulfs him, he is pulled one way by the zealot John Bold, and the other way by his son-in-law, the sardonic and richly comic Archdeacon Grantly. The Warden finds himself faced with difficult moral choices. Trollope’s treatment of personal dilemmas and human foible lends an ironic spice to the arguments of those who wish to return to ‘Victorian values’.

Joanna Trollope, the best-selling novelist of the 1990’s pays tribute to her distinguished forebear in a delightful introduction.