From its astonishing opening scene, in which the drunken Michael Henchard sells his wife and daughter at a country fair, to the breathtaking series of discoveries at its conclusion, The Mayor of Casterbridge claims a unique place among Thomas Hardy's finest and most powerful novels.

Rooted in an actual case of wife selling in early nineteenth-century England, the story builds into an awesome Sophoclean drama of guilt and revenge, in which

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Man's rise and fall amid natural beauty of English countryside

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...