19th Century Classics Fiction Historical Fiction Literature Novels Victorian

The Mayor of Casterbridge

Name: The Mayor of Casterbridge
Rating: 3.86 (65853 reviews)
Author: Thomas Hardy

Thomas Hardy January 1, 1886

3.86 65.9k Ratings

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Synopsis

Librarian note: The same ISBN is now being used here with a new cover.

In 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’, 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.

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