Audiobook · read by volunteers
Warden
Anthony Trollope (1815–1882)
Read by Andy Minter (1934-2017), Kara Shallenberg (1969-2023), Kristin LeMoine, Chip, AliceG, Anita Roy Dobbs, Mike Gardom · 21 chapters · 7 h 42
About the book
Mr Harding is the gentle, music-loving warden of a small almshouse in the cathedral town of Barchester. He is a good man, comfortably settled, with a fine income and a lovely daughter. Then a young reformer begins to ask where the money for the poor old men really goes, and the quiet clerical world is thrown into turmoil: newspapers take sides, lawyers circle, a formidable archdeacon prepares to fight, and Mr Harding, who hates quarrels, must decide where his conscience lies. Anthony Trollope's novel is a gentle comedy of manners with a serious moral at its heart, and it is the first of his Barsetshire Chronicles. Seven LibriVox readers share twenty-one chapters, about seven and three quarter hours of warm, witty and humane listening. Quiet drama with real warmth.
Introduction
Anthony Trollope, who lived from 1815 to 1882, was one of the most productive and popular English novelists of the nineteenth century. Of the popular novelists of his age who are still widely read, he is often placed beside his contemporary Charles Dickens. His novels fall into two main series: the political novels, known as the Palliser series, and the clerical ones, known as the Chronicles of Barsetshire. The Warden, published in 1855, is the first of the clerical novels and was his first really successful book.
The inspiration came from real controversies. In the middle of the nineteenth century there were a number of financial scandals in the Church of England involving endowments that had been diverted from their original purpose, including cases at Rochester and at the hospital of St Cross at Winchester. Trollope took the question of church money and turned it into a small, personal drama, in which the issue is not a villain but a decent man caught between loyalty and conscience. The book is gentle, ironic and very human, and it shows a sympathy for all its characters, even the ones who are mistaken.
It is also an excellent introduction to Barchester, a fictional cathedral town populated by bishops, archdeacons, wives and daughters, which Trollope would return to in five further novels. His style is plain and conversational, and his pleasure in observing social life is infectious.
This recording has twenty-one chapters and lasts about seven and three quarter hours, with seven LibriVox volunteers sharing the reading. It is a fine companion for anyone who likes a leisurely Victorian novel with a quietly beating heart.
Public domain
Anthony Trollope died in 1882: the work is in the public domain in Switzerland, more than 70 years after the author’s death.
The LibriVox volunteers dedicated this recording to the public domain.
Sources : LibriVox page · Files at the Internet Archive · Original text