It was so hard that the pleasant waters of his little stream should be disturbed and muddied ...that his quiet paths should be made a battlefield: that the unobtrusive corner of the world which been allotted to him ...made miserable and unsound'. Trollope's witty, satirical story of a quiet cathedral town shaken by scandal - as the traditional values of Septimus Harding are attacked by zealous reformers and ruthless newspapers - is a drama of conscience that pits individual integrity against worldly ambition. In "The Warden" Anthony Trollope brought the fictional county of Barsetshire to life, peopled by a cast of brilliantly realised characters that have made him among the supreme chroniclers of the minutiae of Victorian England. The first book in the Chronicles of Barsetshire. The Penguin English Library - 100 editions of the best fiction in English, from the eighteenth century and the very first novels to the beginning of the First World War. .