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The Warden/Barchester Towers ~ Trollope ~ Fall Book Club Online
PatH:
Bellamarie, you know more than you think about Victorian England. Cranford was published just 2 years before Barchester Towers.
Thanks for the information about almshouses:
--- Quote ---There is an important delineation between almshouses and other forms of sheltered housing in that almshouse residents generally have no security of tenure, being solely dependent upon the goodwill of the administering trustees.
--- End quote ---
I can imagine the jockeying for favor that went on.
The Hospital of St. Cross and its church are certainly beautiful, but if you think about those dwellings, they are going to be very dark and very cold (though no more so than other small dwellings of the time}.
youetb:
Barb,
I would like to join the group. Is there a specific edition we should read. I see many offerings on Amazon. Thanks Nancy
PatH:
Welcome, Nancy. I'll let Barb answer your question, but I think it's a question of whether you want commentary and background notes. The text should be the same. We're a pretty congenial bunch here; I hope you'll enjoy talking with us.
BarbStAubrey:
looking forward to your posts Callie
Never thought Pat, but yes, I can see the jockeying for attention - seems all of life is a race as if there is not enough to go around from financial resources, to goods, to natural resources, to attention and love from parents, boss, kings, and the biggie the controller of the purse -
Great - Welcome youetb - look there has been a big mixup over the book we are reading - it appears we are doing Barchester Towers - when I ordered my book from Amazon I thought I ordered The Warden and arrived is Barchester Towers - the book we are reading has 53 chapters and that is the key - because it appears The Warden that is online free has only 21 chapters - there is a TV version that is quite good that shows both and they may be entwined - but safe to say I will put the link up for the 1st youtube section - the series showed on PBS and is in 7 sections - we really like to use our reading to discuss our books rather than a movie or TV movie but in this case with the mix-up (we advertised The Warden for weeks and then this huge mixup so everyone was on board with reading Barchester Towers) anyhow seeing that first youtube section will offer some background of how Reverend Harding and his youngest daughter fit into the story -
To get the book we are discussing the 2nd book in the series, Barchester Towers - I had ordered the Oxford Classic - but any edition should work - the reason I like the Oxford edition to a book is they are usually annotated.
Now if you are a fast reader and just want the facts of what happened reading The Warden this week will add to your enjoyment however, Barchester Towers does stand alone - some editions that Amazon has available includes both these books in one - The 2nd book Barchester Towers does not go into how the Reverend Harding's younger daughter was married had a child and her husband died - it was him and his editor that brought to light the medieval mandate about the financing of the almshouse where Reverend Harding was the acting Chaplin. After facts were brought to light he chose to retire - we pick up with a new Bishop coming to replace the kind old Bishop who died. The stories have lots of irony, tongue and cheek, inconsistency of intent within the Church, power plays and big egos, played against the kindness and caring for others that is typical of some of the characters.
;) all that just to say welcome - and any edition will work as long as there are the 53 chapters - here is the link to the Gutenberg ebooks editions of Barchester Towers http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/3409 and here is the link to the Gutenberg ebooks edition of The Warden http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/619
Thanks Pat - yep, a congenial bunch and after this mixup for sure congenial - always a first time for something...
Jonathan:
Congratulations, Barb, on the splendid heading. Getting into the discussion is impossible without first having a few words with the owl. And I went back to her after I had considered the parameters you were setting for our read. How did the owl feel? Would we enfoy Trollope more if we knew something about Victorian England, or would reading Trollope inform us about his contemporaries and the times.
Granted, it would be useful to know something about the officers of the Church of England. The bishops, and the vicars and rectors, the prebendaries and the precentors, the archdeacons and the chaplins. And of course the Wardens. The diicese? The parish? The See?
I read something recently which might be of interest in reading our book. It concerns Laurence Sterne, who lived a hundred years earlier. The Church was obviously a career opportunity. Allow me to quote:
'On completing his course at the university he was ordained a minister. He had no strong "calling" to a clerical life but just "sat down quietly in the lap of the church" and was soon, with the assistance of an infuential uncle, installed in a number of livings near York. He held the vicarages of Sutton and Stillington, was a prebend of the cathedral and Commisary of the Peculiar Court of Pickering and Pocklington. As was the custom then, he employed a curate, finding diversions in cathedral politics, philandering and the company of a roistering set of blades who defiantly called themselves the "Demoniacks" and gathered to drink and revel at John Hall Stevenson's "Crazy Castle," near Saltburn-by-the-sea.' (Bergen Evans, introduction to The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman)
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