Reading Order
Barsetshire ChroniclesThe Warden / Barsetshire Chronicles Reading Order
The Warden (1855) by Anthony Trollope was the novel that launched his career and the first of the six-novel Barsetshire sequence — a story about Septimus Harding, a gentle, music-loving clergyman who is warden of Hiram's Hospital (a medieval charitable institution that provides housing for twelve elderly men), and whose modest income from this position is attacked as sinecure by an ambitious young reformer and a muckraking journalist. The novel is Trollope's first fully realized character study and the introduction of Barchester, the fictional cathedral city in the fictional county of Barsetshire that would become one of the most beloved settings in English fiction. What distinguishes The Warden from contemporary social-reform fiction (Dickens, Gaskell) is Trollope's refusal to take sides: the reformers have a point about sinecures; Harding is genuinely gentle and good; the institution itself is valuable. Trollope's achievement is to make the reader feel the force of all positions simultaneously, and to show Harding making a principled sacrifice that satisfies nobody — including himself.
Where to start
The Warden (1855)
Complete Barsetshire Chronicles Book List
Barsetshire Chronicles — Frequently Asked Questions
Do I need to read all six Barsetshire novels, and in what order?
The six Barsetshire novels (The Warden, Barchester Towers, Doctor Thorne, Framley Parsonage, The Small House at Allington, The Last Chronicle of Barset) are linked by setting and recurring characters but are self-contained enough to be read independently. Most readers start with The Warden or Barchester Towers. The Last Chronicle of Barset, in which Mr. Crawley is accused of stealing a cheque, is generally regarded as the finest of the six — Trollope called it his best novel. Doctor Thorne is sometimes recommended as a first novel for readers who want a strong romantic plot; Barchester Towers for those who want the fullest portrait of cathedral city social life.
What is the Barsetshire sequence about?
The Barsetshire novels are about the social and professional life of a fictional English cathedral city (Barchester) and its surrounding county, centering on the clergy of the Church of England and the landed gentry of the region. They cover the full range of middle-class Victorian life — politics, marriage, money, professional ambition, clerical reform, and the survival of traditional English institutions in the face of Victorian modernization. The recurring characters (Harding, Archdeacon Grantly, Mrs. Proudie, Mr. Crawley) develop across the six novels in ways that reward reading the sequence in order even though each novel is independently accessible.
Who is Mrs. Proudie, and why is she famous?
Mrs. Proudie is the wife of Bishop Proudie, who becomes Bishop of Barchester in Barchester Towers — a domineering evangelical woman who effectively runs the diocese while her husband serves as her instrument. She is one of the great comic-villainous characters in Victorian fiction and Trollope's most fully developed female antagonist. She appears in four of the six Barsetshire novels and is eventually killed off by Trollope in The Last Chronicle of Barset — a decision prompted (Trollope claimed) by overhearing two clergymen in a club complaining that she appeared in every book; he went home and killed her that evening.
How does Trollope compare to Dickens?
The comparison was a Victorian commonplace and usually resolved in Dickens's favor in that period. Modern assessments are more complex: Trollope's strengths — psychological consistency, social observation, the ability to make the reader understand all positions in a social controversy — are different from Dickens's (comic energy, social indignation, theatrical invention). Trollope's characters are more realistic in the sense that they are less theatrical: they don't have the unforgettable peculiarities of Dickens's great inventions, but they develop more believably over time. Henry James preferred Trollope to Dickens precisely because Trollope's social observation was more continuous and more like the actual social world James wanted fiction to render.
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