Other editions of book Under the Greenwood Tree

Hardy's Under the Greenwood Tree: Or, The Mellstock Quire is the story of Dick and Fancy, whose marriage is built upon deception. Culture and Progress wrote that ""The author certainly manages to convey the impression that he is a believer in the natural fickleness of the maiden heart, but his belief does not lead him into denunciation; on the contrary, he makes this fickleness not merely not repulsive, but agreeable."

The plot concerns the activities of a group of church musicians, the Mellstock parish choir, one of whom, Dick Dewy, becomes romantically entangled with a comely new school mistress, Fancy Day. The novel opens with the fiddlers and singers of the choir—including Dick, his father Reuben Dewy, and grandfather William Dewy—making the rounds in Mellstock village on Christmas Eve. When the little band plays at the schoolhouse, young Dick falls for Fancy at first sight.

The love of a rustic Romeo for a femme fatale of the fields; the motley village band which acts a raucous chorus to their romance; the skylarking boys who dam a subterranean stream, and manipulate the destiny of a community. Hardy has pierced irrationalities of existence and the blind perversity of human nature, sketching his vision here through quirks of character and absurd ironies of fortune.

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Hardy's Under the Greenwood Tree: Or, The Mellstock Quire is the story of Dick and Fancy, whose marriage is built upon deception. Culture and Progress wrote that """"The author certainly manages to convey the impression that he is a believer in the natural fickleness of the maiden heart, but his belief does not lead him into denunciation; on the contrary, he makes this fickleness not merely not repulsive, but agreeable."""