The Mayor of Casterbridge - Softcover

Hardy, Thomas

Softcover

ISBN 10: 014062029X ISBN 13: 9780140620290

Publisher: Penguin Classics, 1994

Synopsis

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.

About this title

About the Author

Thomas Hardy was born in Dorset in 1840 and became an apprentice architect at the age of sixteen. He spent his twenties in London, where he wrote his first poems. In 1867 Hardy returned to his native Dorset, whose rugged landscape was a great source of inspiration for his writing. Between 1871 and 1897 he wrote fourteen novels, including Tess of the D'Urbervilles and Jude the Obscure. This final work was received savagely; thereafter Hardy turned away from novels and spent the last thirty year of his life focusing on poetry. He died in 1928.

From the Back Cover

Under the powerful influence of the rum furmity, Michael Henchard, a hay-trusser by trade, sells his wife susan and their child Elizabeth-Jane to Newson, a sailor, for five guineaus.

Years later, Susan, now a widow, arrives in Casterbridge to seek her legal husband. To their surprise, Henchard is now the Mayor of Casterbridge and following the sale of his wife, took a twenty-one-year vow not to drink, out of shame. Henchard remarries Susan and as Elizabeth-Jane believes herself to be Newson's daughter, he adopts her as his own. But he cannot evade his destiny by such measures, for his past refuses to be buried. Fate contrives for him to be punished for the recklessness of his younger days.

In this powerful depiction of a man who overreaches himself, Hardy once again show his acute psycological grasp and his deep-seated knowledge of mid-nineteenth century Dorset.

Edition details

• Publisher: Penguin Classics
• Publication date: 1994
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 014062029X
• ISBN 13: 9780140620290
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 400