The Warden

I just finished The Warden (1855) by Anthony Trollope. Terrific!

This is the first of six books in the Chronicles of Barsetshire series. Katie at Books and Things recommends reading books 1 and 2 back to back, so I shall start Barchester Towers right away. Apparently the other four books take place in Barsetshire and we see some of the same people repeatedly, but they are not really sequels.

Trollope used a couple of words and phrases that surprised me. First, he used the word tomahawk metaphorically.

that he could give the lie to that wielder of the tomahawk who had dared to write such things of him in The Jupiter

I don't know why I was surprised. I mean, tomahawk is a North American word, but it had probably been in English for some 200 years by 1855. Yet I was.

Then I was surprised to see the phrase filthy lucre

Both her auditors, brother and sister, assented to this, and declared on their own knowledge that no man lived less addicted to filthy lucre than the warden.

but that again is on me. The phrase has been in English since at least the 1500s (it appears in the King James bible). I don't know why I thought it was modern.

He also calls a telegram, "a message by electric telegraph," which I find amusing.