Hardy's sunny pastoral of English rural life is his best-loved, most humorous novel. When Bathsheda Everdene takes up her inheritance at the largest farm in Weatherbury, her beautiful and unsettling presence draws three suitors: the local farmer Boldwood, the shepherd Gabriel Oak and Sergeant Troy, Hardy's dashing soldier-seducer. Hardy pours into this novel his intimate knowledge of Dorsetshire customs and landscapes, his love of poetry, the Bible and the classics, and his immense unflinching curiosity about male-female relations.
Thomas Hardy was born in 1840 and wrote both poetry and novels, including The Mayor of Casterbridge, Tess of the D'Urbervilles and Jude the Obscure. He died in 1928.
Rosemarie Morgan teaches in the English department at Yale University.
Patricia Ingham is the advisory editor for the Hardy series. She teaches English at the University of Oxford.