Books with title The Mayor of Casterbridge: Illustrated

Thomas Hardy's haunting study of guilt and lost love, now in a beautiful new hardcover edition designed by Coralie Bickford-SmithIn a fit of drunken anger, Michael Henchard sells his wife and baby daughter for five guineas at a country fair. Over the course of the following years, he manages to establish himself as a respected and prosperous pillar of the community of Casterbridge, but behind his success there always lurk the shameful secret of his past and a personality prone to self-destructive pride and temper. Subtitled "A Story of a Man of Character," The Mayor of Casterbridge, Hardy's powerful and sympathetic study of the heroic but deeply flawed Henchard, is also an intensely dramatic work, tragically played out against the vivid backdrop of a close-knit Dorsetshire town.For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.

The Mayor of Casterbridge by Thomas Hardy is a tragic novel set in the fictional town of Casterbridge. Michael Henchard, a young hay trusser, overindulges in rum-laced furmity and quarrels with his wife, Susan. Spurred by alcohol, he decides to auction off his wife and baby daughter, Elizabeth-Jane, to a sailor, Mr. Newson, for five guineas. Once sober the next day, he is too late to recover his family, particularly since his reluctance to reveal his own bad conduct keeps him from conducting an effective search. When he realizes that his wife and daughter are gone, probably for good, he swears not to touch liquor again for as many years as he has lived so far (21). Nineteen years later, Henchard, now a successful grain merchant, is the eponymous Mayor of Casterbridge, known for his staunch sobriety. He is well respected for his financial acumen and his work ethic, but he is not well liked. Impulsive, selfish behavior and a violent temper are still part of his character, as are dishonesty and secretive activity.

With an Introduction and Notes by Michael Irwin, Professor of English Literature, University of Kent at Canterbury None of the great Victorian novels is more vivid and readable than The Mayor of Casterbridge. Set in the heart of Hardy's Wessex, the 'partly real, partly dream country' he founded on his native Dorset, it charts the rise and self-induced downfall of a single 'man of character'. The fast-moving and ingeniously contrived narrative is Shakespearian in its tragic force, and features some of the author's most striking episodes and brilliant passages of description.

The text of this edition is based on the Wessex Edition of 1912, which was revised and corrected by the author. It has been collated with the Mellstock Edition of 1920, for which Hardy submitted final corrections. "Backgrounds and Contexts" provides new and invaluable source material on Victorian Dorset and, in particular, Dorchester, Hardy’s native home and the town upon which Casterbridge is based. Included are six of Hardy’s nonfiction writings, notably excerpts from his essay "The Dorsetshire Laboure" (1883), in which he frankly comments on the social changes he has witnessed in the county. Hardy’s Wessex is further examined in an essay by Michael Millgate, by maps of Casterbridge and Wessex, and by a key to local place names. Christine Winfield discusses the novel’s manuscript and its complicated history. "Criticism" collects seventeen wide-ranging assessments of the novel--six new to the Second Edition--from both contemporary and modern critics, including Virginia Woolf, Albert J. Guerard, Julian Moynahan, John Paterson, Michael Millgate, Irving Howe, J. Hillis Miller, Ian Gregor, Elaine Showalter, George Levine, William Greenslade, H. M. Daleski, and Suzanne Keen. A Chronology and Selected Bibliography are also included.