GajimaruClassics.
Far from the Madding CrowdOn the coverThe Gleaners, Jean-François Millet, 1857
Far from the Madding Crowd
The spirited, independent Bathsheba Everdene inherits a farm and finds herself courted by three very different men: a faithful shepherd, a prosperous bachelor, and a dashing soldier. Hardy’s first great novel of love and the land.
Character notes and context for the chapter you’ve read.
Hardy at his most golden and least bleak, a sweeping pastoral romance with one of fiction's most independent heroines. The countryside itself has never been painted more lovingly.
SettingRural “Wessex”, 1870s
The vanishing world of the rural English south, where the rhythm of the seasons and the harvest ruled life, and a woman running her own farm was a scandal and a wonder.