The Warden
Anthony Trollope Audio Book

The first of Trollope’s Barsetshire novels, ’The Warden' concerns the moral dilemma of the Reverend Septimus Harding, who finds himself at the centre of a bitter conflict between defenders of Church privilege and the reformers of the mid-Victorian period.

Appointed warden of an almshouse, he is given a comfortable salary from its founder’s will to oversee the institution and the small weekly incomes given to the men who live there. Mr. Harding’s disproportionate salary, however, becomes a source of concern for a local reformer who denounces the allocation of funds as a Church abuse.

Anthony Trollope (1815–82) published his first novel in 1847. It was in 1855 that he published ‘The Warden', the first of his most famous series, the Barsetshire novels. The series continued with ‘Barchester Towers', 'Doctor Thorne', 'Framley Parsonage', 'The Small House at Allington' and ‘The Last Chronicle of Barset'.