Far from the Madding Crowd

'The first of Hardy's great novels, and the first to sound the tragic note for which his best fiction is remembered' Margaret Drabble

Thomas Hardy's novel of swift passion and slow courtship is imbued with evocative descriptions of rural life, and with unflinching honesty about sexual relationships. Its heroine, Bathsheba Everdene, takes up her position as a farmer on a large estate, where her confident presence draws three very different suitors: the gentleman-farmer Boldwood, the soldier-seducer Sergeant Troy and the devoted shepherd Gabriel Oak. Each, in contrasting ways, unsettles her decisions and complicates her life, and when tragedy ensues, the stability of the whole community is threatened.

Edited with an Introduction and notes by ROSEMARIE MORGAN with SHANNON RUSSELL

Author: Thomas Hardy
Binding Type: Paperback
Publisher: Penguin Group
Published: 04/29/2003
Series: Penguin Classics
Pages: 480
Weight: 0.7lbs
Size: 7.75h x 5.08w x 0.87d
ISBN: 9780141439655

About the Author
Thomas Hardy (1840-1928), whose writing immortalized the semi-fictional Wessex countryside and dramatized his sense of the inevitable tragedy of life, wrote fifteen novels, including The Return of the Native (1878), The Mayor of Casterbridge (1886), Tess of the d'Urbervilles (1891), and Jude the Obscure (1895). He is also renowned as one of the greatest poets of his era.

Rosemarie Morgan is a professor of English at Yale. Her many works on Thomas Hardy include Women and Sexuality in the Novels of Thomas Hardy and Cancelled Words: Rediscovering Thomas Hardy.

Shannon Russell is an assistant professor of English at John Cabot University in Rome.