Chapter 6 is an account of how Trollope ‘made the first rank’ among Victorian novelists. Focusing on the years 1858–60, Sutherland provides crucial data about the publishing history of The Warden while placing that novel in the larger context of the novelist’s early literary career. He confirms Henry James’s observation that Trollope’s career was distinguished by ‘plain persistence’.

Trollope, Anthony, Autobiography (Oxford, 1953, first published 1883). In chapter 5 of his autobiography, Trollope gives his own account of how he conceived and wrote The Warden. He remarks that he had been ‘struck by two opposite evils’ – abuses by the Church of charitable funds and the ‘undeserved severity’ of newspaper attacks on the same abuses. He then concludes that he should not have attempted to critique both these faults simultaneously. Explicitly or not, most subsequent commentary on the novel begins from or circles back towards this self-analysis.

Wall, Stephen, Trollope and Character (London, 1988). ‘Being in a dilemma is perhaps the most important recurring situation in Trollope’s fiction, and The Warden is the first of his novels in which its possibilities begin to appear.’ A highlight of Wall’s concise discussion is his account of the chapter ‘A Long Day in London’, ‘by far the most absorbing in the novel’.

West, Rebecca, The Court and the Castle: Some Treatments of a Recent Theme (New Haven, 1957). In the course of an appreciative treatment of Trollope’s fiction, West maintains that the Barchester novels ‘are really novels about the Civil Service, furnished with an ecclesiastical background and trappings.’ The Warden’s weakness is its effort to combine realism and satire; however, West is sympathetic to Trollope’s condemnation of overly ruthless reforms.

Chronology

1815 Battle of Waterloo

Lord George Gordon Byron, Hebrew Melodies

Anthony Trollope born 24 April at 16 Keppel Street, Bloomsbury, the fourth son of Thomas and Frances Trollope. Family moves shortly after to Harrow-on-the-Hill

1823 Attends Harrow as a day-boy (–1825)

1825 First public steam railway opened

Sir Walter Scott, The Betrothed and The Talisman

Sent as a boarder to a private school in Sunbury, Middlesex

1827 Greek War of Independence won in the battle of Navarino

Sent to school at Winchester College. His mother sets sail for the USA on 4 November with three of her children

1830 George IV dies; his brother ascends the throne as William IV

William Cobbett, Rural Rides

Removed from Winchester. Sent again to Harrow until 1834

1832 Controversial First Reform Act extends the right to vote to approximately one man in five

Frances Trollope, Domestic Manners of the Americans

1834 Slavery abolished in the British Empire. Poor Law Act introduces workhouses to England

Edward Bulwer-Lytton, The Last Days of Pompeii

Trollope family migrates to Bruges to escape creditors. Anthony returns to London to take up a junior clerkship in the General Post Office

1835 Halley’s Comet appears. ‘Railway mania’ in Britain

Robert Browning, Paracelsus

His father dies in Bruges

1840 Queen Victoria marries Prince Albert of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha. Penny Post introduced

Charles Dickens, The Old Curiosity Shop (–1841)

Dangerously ill in May and June

1841 Thomas Carlyle, On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History

Appointed Postal Surveyor’s Clerk for Central District of Ireland. Moves to Banagher, King’s County (now Co. Offaly)

1843 John Ruskin, Modern Painters (vol. I)

Begins to write his first novel, The Macdermots of Ballycloran

1844 Daniel O’Connell, campaigner for Catholic Emancipation, imprisoned for conspiracy; later released

William Thackeray, The Luck of Barry Lyndon

Marries Rose Heseltine in June. Transferred to Clonmel, Co. Tipperary

1846 Famine rages in Ireland. Repeal of the Corn Laws

Dickens, Dombey and Son (–1848)

First son, Henry Merivale, born in March

1847 Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre; Emily Brontë, Wuthering Heights A second son, Frederic James Anthony, born in September The Macdermots of Ballycloran

1848 Revolution in France; re-establishment of the Republic. The ‘Cabbage Patch Rebellion’ in Tipperary fails

Trollopes move to Mallow, Co. Cork

The Kellys and the O’Kellys

1850 Alfred, Lord Tennyson, In Memoriam

La Vendée. Writes The Noble Jilt, a play and the source of his later novel Can You Forgive Her?

1851 The Great Exhibition

Herman Melville, Moby Dick

Sent to survey and reorganize postal system in southwest England and Wales (–1852)

1852 First pillar box in the British Isles introduced in St Helier, Jersey, on Trollope’s recommendation

1853 Thackeray, The Newcombes (–1855)

Moves to Belfast to take post as Acting Surveyor for the Post Office

1854 Britain becomes involved in the Crimean War (–1856)

Appointed Surveyor of the Northern District of Ireland

1855 David Livingstone discovers Victoria Falls, Zambia (Zimbabwe)

Dickens, Little Dorrit (–1857)

Moves to Donnybrook, Co. Dublin

The Warden. Writes The New Zealander (published 1972)

1857 Indian Mutiny (–1858)

Thomas Hughes, Tom Brown’s Schooldays

Barchester Towers

1858 Irish Republican Brotherhood founded in Dublin

George Eliot, Scenes of Clerical Life

Travels to Egypt, England and the West Indies on postal business

Doctor Throne

1859 Charles Darwin, On the Origin of Species

Leaves Ireland to settle in Waltham Cross, Hertfordshire, after being appointed Surveyor of the Eastern District of England

The Bertrams and The West Indies and the Spanish Main

1860 Dickens, Great Expectations (–1861)

Framley Parsonage (–1861, his first serialized fiction) and Castle Richmond

1861 American Civil War (–1865)

John Stuart Mill, Utilitarianism. Mrs Beeton, Book of Household Management

Travels to USA to research a travel book

Orley Farm (–1862)

1862 Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Last Poems

Elected to the Garrick Club

The Small House at Allington (–1864) and North America

1863 His mother dies in Florence

Rachel Ray

1864 Elizabeth Gaskell, Wives and Daughters (–1866)

Elected to the Athenaeum Club

Can You Forgive Her? (–1865)

1865 Abraham Lincoln assassinated

Lewis Carroll, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland

Fortnightly Review founded by Trollope (among others)

Miss Mackenzie, The Belton Estate (–1866)

1866 Eliot, Felix Holt the Radical

The Claverings (–1867), Nina Balatka (–1867) and The Last Chronicle of Barset (–1867)

1867 Second Reform Act extends the franchise further, enlarging the electorate to almost two million

Algernon Charles Swinburne, A Song of Italy

Resigns from the GPO and assumes editorship of St Paul’s Magazine

Phineas Finn (–1869)

1868 Last public execution in London

Wilkie Collins, The Moonstone

Visits the USA on a postal mission; returns to England to stand unsuccessfully as a Liberal candidate for Beverley, Yorkshire

He Knew He Was Right (–1869)

1869 Suez Canal opened

Richard Doddridge Blackmore, Lorna Doone

The Vicar of Bullhampton (–1870)

1870 Married Women’s Property Act passed

Dickens, The Mystery of Edwin Drood

Resigns editorship of St Paul’s Magazine

Ralph the Heir (–1871), Sir Harry Hotspur of Humblethwaite, and a translation of The Commentaries of Caesar

1871 Eliot, Middlemarch (–1872)

Gives up house at Waltham Cross and sails to Australia with Rose to visit his son Frederic

The Eustace Diamonds (–1873)

1872 Thomas Hardy, Under the Greenwood Tree and A Pair of Blue Eyes (–1873)

Travels in Australia and New Zealand and returns to England via the USA

The Golden Lion of Granpere

1873 Mill, Autobiography

Settles in Montagu Square, London

Lady Anna (–1874), Phineas Redux (–1874); Australia and New Zealand and Harry Heathcote of Gangoïl: A Tale of Australian Bush Life

1874 The first Impressionist Exhibition in Paris

Hardy, Far From the Madding Crowd

The Way We Live Now (–1875)

1875 Alexander Graham Bell patents the telephone

Travels to Australia, via Brindisi, Suez and Ceylon

Begins writing An Autobiography on his return. The Prime Minister (–1876)

1876 Mark Twain, Tom Sawyer

Finishes writing An Autobiography. The American Senator (–1877)

1877 Henry James, The American

Visits South Africa

Is He Popenjoy? (–1878)

1878 Hardy, The Return of the Native

Sails to Iceland

John Caldigate (–1879), The Lady of Launay, An Eye for an Eye (–1879) and South Africa

1879 George Meredith, The Egoist

Cousin Henry, The Duke’s Children (–1880) and Thackeray

1880 Greenwich Mean Time made the legal standard in Britain.