The Warden andBarchester Towers

In June of the year 1999 a group of us on Trollope-l decided to read all the Barsetshire novels in a row; that is, chronologically. We called this journey our Barsetshire Marathon because we decided to read these six books one after another with little or no break between each. The first two up were The Warden and Barchester Towers. As in all our recent group reads each week I wrote an "facilitating essay or essays in the form of postings to Trollope-l on the chapters we had read for each week. Most of mine were close readings of the text, but I also responded to what others wrote, and there was much discussion of church politics in the Victorian era. As the weeks went by for this and the later four novels ( Dr Thorne, Framley Parsonage, The Small House at Allington, and The Last Chronicle of Barset) conversation emerged and moved back and forth on all sorts of things in and connected to the novel: character, scenes, personal impulses when we read. I have included many postings by other members as I could find and threaded them in according to a date or where they seemed to make sense. Contributors to the conversation on Trollope-l on The Warden include: Catherine Crean, John Dwyer, Sigmund Eisner, Wayne Gisslen, Jeremy Godfrey, Lisa Guardini, Laurie Guilfoyle, R. J. Keefe, Penny Klein, John Letts, Paul Lewis, Patricia Marony, Howard Merkin, John Mize, Judith Moore, Michael O'Neile, Michael Powe, Virginia Preston, Teresa Ransom, Angela Richardson, June Seigel, Jill Singer, Jill Spriggs, Gene Stratton, Tyler Tichelaar, Neil Tuchten, Joan Wall, Judy Warner, Dagny Wilson, Phoebe Wray, Robert Wright

The Warden is one of Trollope's thirteen novellas, which he defined in The Warden as "that pleasant task -- a novel in one volume":

The Warden

• Introduction: Introduction; The Place of These Books in Trollope's Career, Politics and Life; Church Politics: High and Low Church as related to Class and Religious Belief Little Versus Big Endians; or, High v Low Churchism); Church History; Owen Chadwick's essay; An Unknown Review of The Warden by Wilkie Collins; Barchester Chronicles, The Film.
• Chapters 1-4: A Crisis of Conscience Embedded in a Political Fable; Archbishop Grantly v John Bold; The Twelve Old Men and the Will; Mr Harding's Cello.
• Chapters 5-8: Serious Drollery, or Playfulness with a Point; Dr Grantly and Rabelais; Why Can Some People Not Endurer Dr Grantly?; The Art and Achievement of The Warden; Friendly Disagreements and Vigorous Debate.
• Chapters 9-12: Mr Harding's Anguish, Eleanor as Iphigenia, John Bold and Dr Grantly once again; Tom Towers's Name.
• Chapters 13-19: Mr Harding's Long Day in London, Trollope in One of his Finest Moments; In Defense of The Jupiter; Trollope's Attitude Towards Newspapers; His Satire on Dickens, Carlyle and Pre-Raphaelite Art.
• Chapters 17-21: "Not Warden now, only Precentor"; On Walking Away as Moral Heroism or Courage; On Mr Harding as a Worldly Man, or Why Mr Quiverful Can't Walk; The Price Mr Harding Pays; A Parallel between Mr Whittlestaff of An Old Man's Love and Mr Harding; Mr Harding Has No Appetite for Dictating to Others

• A Description of Three Illustrations in Contemporary Editions of The Warden

Barchester Towers is in many respects a rewrite of The Warden in a more conventional format (3 volumes, several plots, various crises), done in high spirits, with Fielding partly in mind (as regards narrative technique and the comic fun), and Sterne (as regards insidious sexuality of Dr Slop and Slope and the Signora), with a phasing in of a different set of themes. Thus we read it directly after The Warden; that is, with no break. Since most of us did not own an edition which followed the 1856 three volume format, but rather more recent re-divisions which divided the text into two volumes, I drew a calendar based on a later edition of the book that I owned.

Barchester Towers

Volume I

• Introduction: A Chronology of the Barsetshire Novels and What Came Inbetween The Warden and Barchester Towers, Some New and Remarkable Characters: The Signora Neroni, Bertie Stanhope and Dr and Mrs Proudie; A Trimmer; Different Kinds of Feminism; Obadiah Slope, Class Snobbery, the Evangelicals and the Oxford Movement.
• Chapters 1-6: In A War Two Sides Emerge; Fanny Trollope's Vicar of Wrexhill, The Slimy Mr Slope and Laurence Sterne's Dr Slop; Trollope's Strong Class-Bias; His Distaste for Sabbatarians; Trollope as Mild Hedonist; Ecclesiastical Politics and a Serious Religious Dispute; Trollope's Barsetshire fictions and The World of Don Camillo; In Defense of Mr Slope, or, Trollope Far from Unsympathetic; Primates or Unintended Jokes and Dr Grantly; Satire on Fundamentalism in Barchester Towers, Miss Mackenzie and John Caldigate (early , middle and late-career Trollope); What Do We Mean By the Term, "Gentleman" and What Did Trollope Mean?: Shirley Letwin's The Gentleman in Trollope: Individuality and Moral Conduct and Trollope's The Claverings; Eleanor as Imogen.
• Chapters 7-12: The Plot Thickens; Mrs Proudie's Magnificent Exit out of her own Conversazione; "My sentence is for Open War" saith Dr Grantly; Houses and Rooms and Customs as Status Symbols.
• Chapters 13-19: The Rubbish Cart; The New Champion; The Widow's Suitors; Baby Worship: "Oh, ick!"; The Rich Widow, her Babe, & Quiverfuls; Moonlit Stanhopes and Old-Gabled Buildings; A Somewhat Altered Mr Harding: Changing Characters in the Barsetshire Series: Dr Thorne, Miss Dunstable, Dr Grantly; A Candid Storyteller Close Up to UsMrs Quiverful & Mrs Proudie; Countercurrents; Barchester Towers and Bleak House Compared: What is Likable in One Unendurable in the Other.
• Chapters 17-22(in the first edition of the novel, Chapter 19 closed Volume I, and Chapter 20 began Volume II): Who shall be Cock of the Walk?; The Widow's Persecution; Barchester by Moonlight; Mr. Arabin; The Genuinely Searching Religious Themes Through the Characters of Crawley and Arabin; Rambling Round St Ewold's; Quiet Scenes; The Thornes of Ullathorne; Trollope and Tudor Windows.
• Chapters 23-27: Mr. Arabin Reads Himself In At St. Ewold's; Mr. Slope Manages Very Cleverly at Puddingdale; The Basis of the Manipulation; Fourteen Arguments in favour of Mr. Quiverful; Curiously Touching Moments (Mrs Quiverful); Mrs. Proudie wrestles and gets a Fall; Madeline and Obadiah; Gentlemen Once Again; Bawdy Moments between La Signori Neroni and the Rev Mr Slope; Eleanor as Iphigenia (Once Again) and What Was Mrs Proudie's First Name?

Volume II

• Chapters 28-32: Mrs Bold is Entertained; A Serious Interview; Maneuverings; Trollope and Oxford; La Signora Neroni Used as a Plot Device; The Bishop's Library; A new Candidate for Ecclesiastical Honors; Another Niche Opens; La Signora Neroni and the Rev Mr Slope: Who Do We Sympathize With?
• Chapters 33-37 (in the first edition of the novel, Chapter 34 closed Volume II,
  amd Chapter 35 began Volume III): Mrs Proudie Victrix; Dean Slope?: Not With Scent and Red Hair; A Festival Event; Oxford - The Master and Tutor of Lazarus; A Chapter Whose Pace Marks the Time & A Clue; Miss Thorne's Fete Champetre: An Eight Chapter Party; Quintain and the De Courcy family; Trollope's Not-so- Festive Comedy; The Three Ladies Meet, or Three Heroines Converge.
• Chapters 38-46: The Bishop Sits Down to Breakfast; Rather like a Farce, or Musical Chairs; The Lookalofts and the Greenacres; Social Stratification is the Truest Happiness; It was Philidor pitted against a school-boy; Ullathorne Sports, Act II; Eleanor Confides Her Sorrow to Charlotte; Eleanor Delivers a Blow; Ullathorne Sports -- Act III; The Last of Bertie; Our First Long Letter: From "The Epistolary Trollope"; Three More Letters; 3 Letters & An Article in the Jupiter; The Three Close-Up Acts; The Stanhopes at Home.
• Chapters 47-50: The Summing Up: Robin Gilmour's "Introduction"; Which Book Was Trollope Born to Write?; Comic Closure; On Behalf of Esther Summerson (from Bleak House) and Contra Madeline; Barchester Towers as a Sequel to The Warden?; Trollope's Struggles with His Publisher and Editor over the Text of Barchester Towers.

Trollope's Apollo

• A Guide to the Classics in the Barsetshire Novels of Anthony Trollope: an informative easy-to-use online guide created by students at Hendrix College and Professor Rebecca Resinski.

A Talk by John Letts

• The Cloisters of Barchester
  
  John Everett Millais, The Small House at Allington