Book description
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. Thomas Hardy was born on 2 June 1840. He wrote
novels and poetry, much of which is set in the semi-imaginary county of
Wessex. His novels include
Far From the Madding Crowd
(1874), The Return of the Native
(1878), The Mayor of Casterbridge
(1886), Tess
of the D'Urbervilles
(1891) and Jude the Obscure
(1895). He published his first volume of poetry, Wessex Poems,
in 1898 and continued to publish collections of poems until his death
on 11 January 1928.
