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Look Inside | Reading Guide
Reading Guide
Apr 28, 2015 | ISBN 9780345804006 Buy
Dec 11, 2001 | ISBN 9780375757976 Buy
Jun 01, 1983 | ISBN 9780553213317 Buy *This format is not eligible to earn points towards the Reader Rewards program
Oct 15, 1991 | ISBN 9780679405764 Buy
Aug 12, 2014 | ISBN 9781551997407 Buy
Aug 26, 2008 | ISBN 9780553905557 Buy
Oct 31, 2000 | ISBN 9780679641506 Buy
Apr 28, 2015 | 918 Minutes Buy
Buy from Other Retailers:
Apr 28, 2015 | ISBN 9780345804006
Dec 11, 2001 | ISBN 9780375757976
Jun 01, 1983 | ISBN 9780553213317
Oct 15, 1991 | ISBN 9780679405764
Aug 12, 2014 | ISBN 9781551997407
Aug 26, 2008 | ISBN 9780553905557
Oct 31, 2000 | ISBN 9780679641506
Apr 28, 2015 | ISBN 9780553550672
918 Minutes
This story of a proud rural beauty and the three men who court her is the novel that first made Thomas Hardy famous.Despite the violent ends of several of its major characters, Far from the Madding Crowd is the sunniest and least brooding of Hardy’s great novels. The strong-minded Bathsheba Everdene—and the devoted shepherd, obsessed farmer, and dashing soldier who vie for her favor—move through a beautifully realized late nineteenth-century agrarian landscape, still almost untouched by the industrial revolution and the encroachment of modern life.
Far from the Madding Crowd, Hardy’s passionate tale of the beautiful, headstrong farmer Bathsheba Everdene and her three suitors, firmly established the thirty-four-year-old writer as a popular novelist. According to Virginia Woolf, “The subject was right; the method was right; the poet and the countryman, the sensual man, the sombre reflective man, the man of learning, all enlisted to produce a book which . . . must hold its place among the great English novels.” Introducing the fictional name of “Wessex” to describe Hardy’s legendary countryside, this early masterpiece draws a vivid picture of rural life in southwest England. This Modern Library Paperback Classic is set from the 1912 Wessex edition and features Hardy’s map of Wessex.
Graced with the splendid illustrations executed by Helen Paterson for the first edition of the novel, this special Collector’s Edition of Far from the Madding Crowd also features handwritten letters and drawings by Hardy, as well as rare and intimate portraits of the author and his first wife, Emma. Here, too, readers are granted a fascinating and touching glimpse of how two great imaginative writers interact with one another: This edition reproduces the handwritten pages from Virginia Woolf’s diary in which she recounts her now-famous visit with the very aged Thomas Hardy at his home, Max Gate, in 1926.
Far From the Madding Crowd, published in 1874, is the book that made Hardy famous. Bathsheba Everdene is a prosperous farmer in Hardy’s fictional Wessex county whose strong-minded independence and vanity lead to disastrous consequences for her and the three very different men who pursue her: the obsessed farmer William Boldwood, dashing and seductive Sergeant Frank Troy, and the devoted shepherd Gabriel Oak. Despite the violent ends of several of its major characters, Far from the Madding Crowd is the sunniest and least brooding of Hardy’s great novels, as Bathsheba and her suitors move through a beautifully realized late-nineteenth-century agrarian landscape that is still almost untouched by the industrial revolution and the encroachment of modern life. With an introduction by Michael Slater
The novel that first brought Thomas Hardy real success, it is a love-letter to rural English life, unafraid to show both its hardships and its beauty. Bathsheba, the story’s heroine, inherits the family farm at the start of the novel, and is forced to navigate both the challenges presented by her work and by the multiple men in her life – neither easy for a woman at that time. In addition to being a classic of Victorian literature, it has been called an early feminist novel, thanks to the resilience, independence, and depth shown by Bathsheba, and for its negative depiction of the sufferings of women rendered powerless by law and custom. Penguin Random House Canada is proud to bring you classic works of literature in e-book form, with the highest quality production values. Find more today and rediscover books you never knew you loved.
Set in his fictional Wessex countryside in southwest England, Far from the Madding Crowd was Thomas Hardy’s breakthrough work. Though it was first published anonymously in 1874, the quick and tremendous success of Far from the Madding Crowd persuaded Hardy to give up his first profession, architecture, to concentrate on writing fiction. The story of the ill-fated passions of the beautiful Bathsheba Everdene and her three suitors offers a spectacle of country life brimming with an energy and charm not customarily associated with Hardy. (‘When Farmer Oak smiled,’ the novel begins, ‘the corners of his mouth spread till they were within an unimportant distance of his ears. . . .’) The text is based on the authoritative Wessex Edition of 1912, revised and corrected by Hardy himself. This edition is the companion volume to the Mobil Masterpiece Theatre WGBH television presentation broadcast on PBS. It stars Paloma Baeza as Bathsheba Everdene, Nathaniel Parker as Gabriel Oak, Nigel Terry as Mr. Boldwood, and Jonathan Firth as Frank Troy. Adapted by Philomena McDonagh, Far from the Madding Crowd is directed by Nick Renton.
Thomas Hardy was born on June 2, 1840. In his writing, he immortalized the site of his birth—Egdon Heath, in Dorset, near Dorchester, England. Delicate as a child, he was taught at home by his mother before he attended grammar school…. More about Thomas Hardy
“Far from the Madding Crowd is the first of Thomas Hardy’s great novels, and the first to sound the tragic note for which his fiction is best remembered.”-Margaret Drabble
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