Other editions of book The Mayor of Casterbridge

Purchase one of 1st World Library's Classic Books and help support our free internet library of downloadable eBooks. Visit us online at www.1stWorldLibrary.ORG - - One evening of late summer, before the nineteenth century had reached one-third of its span, a young man and woman, the latter carrying a child, were appro- aching the large village of Weydon-Priors, in Upper Wessex, on foot. They were plainly but not ill clad, though the thick hoar of dust which had accumulated on their shoes and garments from an obviously long journey lent a disadvantageous shabbiness to their appearance just now. The man was of fine figure, swarthy, and stern in aspect; and he showed in profile a facial angle so slightly inclined as to be almost perpendicular. He wore a short jacket of brown corduroy, newer than the remainder of his suit, which was a fustian waistcoat with white horn buttons, breeches of the same, tanned leggings, and a straw hat overlaid with black glazed canvas. At his back he carried by a looped strap a rush basket, from which protruded at one end the crutch of a hay-knife, a wimble for hay-bonds being also visible in the aperture. His measured, springless walk was the walk of the skilled countryman as distinct from the desultory shamble of the general labourer; while in the turn and plant of each foot there was, further, a dogged and cynical indifference personal to himself, showing its presence even in the regularly interchanging fustian folds, now in the left leg, now in the right, as he paced along.

Thomas Hardys novels about the cruel twists of fate that blight our lives have a timeless power to move us. In The Mayor Casterbridge, a young Michael Henchard makes a rash, alcohol-fuelled decision to sell his wife. Despite abstaining from alcohol from this point forward and living an upstanding life, this lapse is a revenant that returns to plague him at the peak of his career. In his struggles to overcome his hot-headed, belligerent nature, Henchard is very recognisably human and sympathetic hero.

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Set against the backdrop of peaceful south-west England, where Thomas Hardy spent much of his youth, The Mayor of Casterbridge captures the author's unique genius for depicting the absurdity underlying much of the sorrow and humor in our lives. In the stunning opening chapter of The Mayor of Casterbridge, a drunken hay-trusser, Michael Henchard, sells his wife and daughter for five guineas to a sailor. The book follows Henchard who, overcome by guilt after the sale of his wife, swears he will not have another drink of alcohol for twenty years. By hard work, he becomes a wealthy dealer in corn and hay, and eventually the mayor of Casterbridge. But after eighteen years, his wife and child Elizabeth-Jane return and, from this point on, his fortunes decline, in part through bad luck and in part through his own obstinate nature. In the end, his rival Farfrae has Henchard's business, his house, Lucretta, and he even becomes mayor of Casterbridge. Henchard eventually dies in a miserable hut on Egdon Heath. This special edition of The Mayor of Casterbridge features a splendid introduction by fiction writer Rick Moody, who calls Hardy's classic "the first great novel about alcoholism."

homas Hardy (2 June 1840 – 11 January 1928) was an English writer and poet who is most well known for his contributions to the naturalism movement. Hardy’s work also had traces of the Romantic and Enlightenment periods which had preceded him, even though his protagonists are often depicted as tragic characters who are struggling with their social status and their lot in life. In Far From the Madding Crowd, Hardy’s tale is one in which the characters’ lives and destinies are shaped by chance and forces outside their control. Hardy was mostly a natural poet who only wrote novels as a means to make a living, yet he produced classic novels such as Far from the Madding Crowd and Tess of the d'Urbervilles. Many of his novels took place in the semi-fictional county of Wessex, which Hardy based heavily off of his hometown Dorchester.