Far from the Madding Crowd

'I cannot allow any man to - to criticise my private conduct!' she exclaimed. 'Nor will I for a minute'

Bathsheba Everdene, independent and uncompromising, comes to a small rural community to take up a position as a farmer, where her confident presence draws three very different suitors: the gentleman-farmer Boldwood, the seducer Sergeant Troy and devoted shepherd Gabriel Oak. As each man complicates her life, Bathsheba becomes an object of superstition, judgement and betrayal.

Thomas Hardy's 1874 novel of swift passion and slow courtship was radical for its honest portrayal of sexual relationships, and for showing the precarious position of a woman in a man's world.

About the Author

Formerly a prize-winning architectural student, Thomas Hardy (1840-1928) went on to become a prolific novelist and poet. Far From the Madding Crowd is the second of Hardy's great series of Wessex novels. The 'partly real, partly dream-country' of Wessex forms the compellingly beautiful and threatening background against which the struggles of passion so convincingly portrayed in Far From the Madding Crowd are illuminated. Hardy's novels Under the Greenwood Tree, The Return of the Native, Two on a Tower, The Mayor of Casterbridge, Tess of the D'Urbervilles and Jude the Obscure are also published in the Penguin English Library.