Selected Works of Thomas Hardy English 2022

Victorian novelist and poet Thomas Hardy focused much of his work-- including classics like Far from the Madding Crowd and The Mayor of Casterbridge on man's futile struggle against unseen forces. Of his rather unromantic outlook on life, Hardy once said, "Pessimism is, in brief, playing the sure game. You cannot lose at it; you may gain. It is the only view of life in which you can never be disappointed." The Mayor of Casterbridge opens with a scene of such heartlessness and cruelty that it still shocks readers today. A Poor workman named michael Henchard, in a fit of drunken rage,sells his wife and baby daughter to a stranger at a country fair. Stricken with remorse, Henchard forswears alcohol and works hard to become a prosperous businessman and the respected Mayor of Casterbridge. But he cannot erase his past. A dark, complex story, The Mayor of Casterbridge brims with invention,vitality and wit. Far From the Madding Crowd tells the story of beautiful Bathsheba Everdene, a fiercely independent woman who inherits a farm and decides to run it herself. She rejects a marriage proposal from Gabriel Oak, a loyal man who takes a job on her farm after losing his own in an unfortunate accident. He is forced to watch as Bathsheba mischievously flirts with her neigHardboundour, Mr. Boldwood, unleasing a passionate obsession deep within the reserved man. A delicately woven of unrequited love and regret, Far from the Madding Crowd is also an unforgettable portrait of rural culture.