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 unwordly, cello-playing clergyman, beloved by the pensioners of Barchester's almshouse, of which he is Warden. But when ecclesiastical and political skulduggery engulf 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.

Trollope's comic masterpiece of plotting and backstabbing opens as the Bishop of Barchester lies on his deathbed. Soon a pitched battle breaks out over who will take power, involving, among others, the zealous reformer Dr Proudie, his fiendish wife and the unctuous schemer Obadiah Slope. Barchester Towers is one of the best-loved novels in Trollope's Chronicles of Barsetshire series, which captured nineteenth-century provincial England with wit, worldly wisdom and an unparalleled gift for characterization. It is the second book in the Chronicles of Barsetshire.

And there is much excellent good sense in the mode of riding adopted by such gentlemen. Some men ride for hunting, some for jumping, and some for exercise; some, no doubt, for all three of these things. Given a man with a desire for the latter, no taste for the second, and some partiality for the first, and he cannot do better than ride in the manner I am describing. He may be sure that he will not find himself alone; and he may be sure also that he will incur none of that ridicule which the non-hunting man is disposed to think must be attached to such a pursuit.

“What about?” There are some houses whereof the outward aspect is sealed with the seal of respectability — houses which inspire confidence in the minds of the most sceptical of butchers and bakers — houses at whose area-gates the tradesman delivers his goods undoubtingly, and from whose spotless door-steps the vagabond children of the neighbourhood recoil as from a shrine too sacred for their gambols.

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Excerpt: ...when to be silent,

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