GajimaruClassics.
The Mayor of CasterbridgeOn the coverFebruary Fill Dyke, Benjamin Williams Leader, 1881
The Mayor of Casterbridge
In a drunken folly a young man sells his wife and child at a country fair, then swears off drink and rises to become the respected mayor of a market town, until his buried past comes walking back. Hardy’s great tragedy of character and fate.
Character notes and context for the chapter you’ve read.
One of the great tragedies in English fiction, the rise and fall of a proud, flawed man undone by his own nature. Hardy builds an almost Greek sense of inevitability, and it grips like a vice.
SettingWessex, mid-1800s
A rural English market town in the mid-nineteenth century, still ruled by harvest and grain prices, where reputation is everything and an old shame can ruin a made man overnight.