Book 7: The Warden - Anthony Trollope

It has been a couple of weeks since I read The Warden. There were a couple of reasons I picked the book, first I was tired of reading Human Stain and wanted a break and thought a book set in Victorian England was exactly what this anglophile needed. In addition, I was feeling a little uncharitable towards organized religion and reading a little blurb about Trollope's Barchester Chronicles I felt it was what I was looking for.


I was under the assumption that it would be a scathing attack on the church- well I was wrong. But, I wasn't wrong about the Victorian setting hitting the spot. I liked the book- a little short of loving it. I will revisit Barchester and read the other books sometimes, but for now The Warden was a good introduction.

My only gripe was actually with the edition. The book came with a lot of informative notes at the back which explained the context and Trollope's allusions a lot better. However the text itself had no notation whatsoever about the notes at the back, I had to keep checking in the back whenever I came across something I had to keeping flipping back to check.

The book itself was a very kindly portrait of a clergyman caught in a scandal – to a degree of his making. But he is the typical case of the “more sinned against than sinning”. It is the story told from the point of a kindly well meaning clergyman who is vilified for taking advantage of his wards. Overall, it was an easy read but I wouldn't exactly put this in top 100 or even 200 books.

Anyway an interesting paragraph -

In former times great objects were attained by great work. When evils were to be reformed, reformers set about their heavy task with grave decorum and laborious argument. An age was occupied in providing a grievance, and philosophical researches were printed in folio pages, which it took a life to write, and an eternity to read. We get on now with a lighter step, and quicker: ridicule is found to be more convincing than argument, imaginary agonies touch more than true sorrows, and monthly novels convince, when learned quartos fail to do so. If the world is to be set right, the work will be done by shilling numbers (newspapers).

Someday someone will be referring to Twitter as the decorous art- wonder what will be the frivolous new alternative.. hah hah