Staff Pick
This dark novel begins with a man who, in a drunken rage, sells his wife and daughter at a fair. Full of remorse upon realizing what he has done, he vows to redeem his life — and does so. Yet his secret weighs heavily on him. Hardy is his usual brooding, heartrending self here, but to a beautiful, profound effect. Recommended By Dianah H., Powells.com
Synopses & Reviews
One of Hardy’s most powerful novels,
The Mayor of Casterbridge opens with a shocking and haunting scene: In a drunken rage, Michael Henchard sells his wife and daughter to a visiting sailor at a local fair. When they return to Casterbridge some nineteen years later, Henchard—having gained power and success as the mayor—finds he cannot erase the past or the guilt that consumes him.
The Mayor of Casterbridge is a rich, psychological novel about a man whose own flaws combine with fate to cause his ruin.
This Modern Library Paperback Classic reprints the authoritative 1912 Wessex edition, as well as Hardy’s map of Wessex.
From the Trade Paperback edition.
About the Author
Thomas Hardy, whose writing immortalized the Wessex countryside and dramatized his sense of the inevitable tragedy of life, was born at Upper Bockhampton, near Stinsford in Dorset in 1840, the eldest child of a prosperous stonemason. As a youth he trained as an architect and in 1862 obtained a post in London. During his time he began seriously to write poetry, which remained his first literary love and his last. In 1867-68, his first novel was refused publication, but
Under the Greenwood Tree (1872), his first Wessex novel, did well enough to convince him to continue writing. In 1874,
Far from the Maddening Crowd, published serially and anonymously in the
Cornhill Magazine, became a great success. Hardy married Emma Gifford in 1878, and in 1885 they settled at Max Gate in Dorchester, where he lived the rest of his life. There he had wrote
The Return of the Native (1878),
The Mayor of Casterbridge (1886),
Tess of the dUrbervilles (1891), and
Jude the Obscure (1895).
With Tess, Hardy clashed with the expectations of his audience; a storm of abuse broke over the “infidelity” and “obscenity” of this great novel he had subtitled “A Pure Woman Faithfully Presented.” Jude the Obscure aroused even greater indignation and was denounced as pornography. Hardys disgust at the reaction to Jude led him to announce in 1869 that he would never write fiction ever again. He published Wessex Poems in 1898, Poems of the Past and Present in 1901, and from 1903 to 1908, The Dynast, a huge drama in which Hardys conception of the Immanent Will, implicit in the tragic novels, is most clearly stated.
In 1912 Hardys wife, Emma died. The marriage was childless and had been a troubled one, but in the years after her death, Hardy memorialized her in several poems. At seventy-four he married his longtime secretary, Florence Dugdale, herself a writer of childrens books and articles, with whom he live happily until his death in 1928. His heart was buried in the Wessex Countryside; his ashes were placed next to Charles Dickenss in the Poets Corner of Westminster Abbey.