In May 1852, Anthony Trollope, then a postal official charged with establishing rural mail delivery in several English and Welsh counties, visited the cathedral town of Salisbury and there conceived the subject of a novel. Trollope had previously published three unsuccessful novels, none of which was set in Victorian England.
The Macdermots of Ballycloran(1847) and
The Kellys and the O’Kellys(1848) were set in Ireland, while
La Vendee(1850) was a historical fiction concerning the aftermath of the French Revolution. The new novel, however, was to be contemporary and English in setting, and topical in subject matter. In
An Autobiography, Trollope wrote that he had been
struck by two opposite evils. [. . .] The first evil was the possession by the Church [of England] of certain funds
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Citation: Nardin, Jane. "The Warden". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 11 November 2005 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/sworks.php?rec=true&UID=8094, accessed 25 November 2024.]
