Anthony Trollope's satirical portrait of Dickens as Mr Popular Sentiment in The Warden (1855) touches on many of the questions Dickens and Demolition has explored. In what ways do literary works intersect with contemporary improvements? How are such developments envisioned and implemented, and by whom? Can the impact of fictional texts be traced in material change? Trollope represents a society in which literary novelty is a more ‘powerful’ driver of reform than rigorous research. In so doing, The Warden registers a shift in how such interventions are planned and implemented from earlier periods of development. One major change is in the personnel involved. Aside from the intercessions of authors, Trollope notes that ‘[w]e get on now with a lighter step’, and so implies that women are adopting a more formative role. The narrator's stance on women's and Mr Sentiment's involvement is ambivalent. There are misogynistic and homophobic overtones to his use of the word ‘namby-pamby’, which connotes an ‘insipidly pretty, affectedly or childishly simple’ and ‘effeminate’ lack of ‘vigour or drive’ among this class of reformers. Nevertheless, the satire also emphasises the instrumentality of diverse, and previously unlikely, actors in pushing through material change ‘quicker’ than before.