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Far From the Madding Crowd

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The novel that first brought Thomas Hardy real success, it is a love-letter to rural English life, unafraid to show both its hardships and its beauty.

Bathsheba, the story’s heroine, inherits the family farm at the start of the novel, and is forced to navigate both the challenges presented by her work and by the multiple men in her life – neither easy for a woman at that time. In addition to being a classic of Victorian literature, it has been called an early feminist novel, thanks to the resilience, independence, and depth shown by Bathsheba, and for its negative depiction of the sufferings of women rendered powerless by law and custom.

Penguin Random House Canada is proud to bring you classic works of literature in e-book form, with the highest quality production values. Find more today and rediscover books you never knew you loved.
Thomas Hardy was born on June 2, 1840. In his writing, he immortalized the site of his birth—Egdon Heath, in Dorset, near Dorchester, England. Delicate as a child, he was taught at home by his mother before he attended grammar school. At 16, Hardy was apprenticed to an architect, and for many years, architecture was his profession; in his spare time, he pursued his first and last literary love, poetry. Finally convinced that he could earn his living as an author, he retired from architecture, married, and devoted himself to writing. An extremely productive novelist, Hardy published an important book every year or two. In 1896, disturbed by the public outcry over the unconventional subjects of his two greatest novels—Tess of the D'Urbervilles and Jude the Obscure—he announced that he was giving up fiction and afterward produced only poetry. In later years, he received many honors. He died on January 11, 1928, and was buried in Poets' Corner, in Westminster Abbey. It was as a poet that he wished to be remembered, but today critics regard his novels as his most memorable contribution to English literature for their psychological insight, decisive delineation of character, and profound presentation of tragedy.  View titles by Thomas Hardy

About

The novel that first brought Thomas Hardy real success, it is a love-letter to rural English life, unafraid to show both its hardships and its beauty.

Bathsheba, the story’s heroine, inherits the family farm at the start of the novel, and is forced to navigate both the challenges presented by her work and by the multiple men in her life – neither easy for a woman at that time. In addition to being a classic of Victorian literature, it has been called an early feminist novel, thanks to the resilience, independence, and depth shown by Bathsheba, and for its negative depiction of the sufferings of women rendered powerless by law and custom.

Penguin Random House Canada is proud to bring you classic works of literature in e-book form, with the highest quality production values. Find more today and rediscover books you never knew you loved.

Author

Thomas Hardy was born on June 2, 1840. In his writing, he immortalized the site of his birth—Egdon Heath, in Dorset, near Dorchester, England. Delicate as a child, he was taught at home by his mother before he attended grammar school. At 16, Hardy was apprenticed to an architect, and for many years, architecture was his profession; in his spare time, he pursued his first and last literary love, poetry. Finally convinced that he could earn his living as an author, he retired from architecture, married, and devoted himself to writing. An extremely productive novelist, Hardy published an important book every year or two. In 1896, disturbed by the public outcry over the unconventional subjects of his two greatest novels—Tess of the D'Urbervilles and Jude the Obscure—he announced that he was giving up fiction and afterward produced only poetry. In later years, he received many honors. He died on January 11, 1928, and was buried in Poets' Corner, in Westminster Abbey. It was as a poet that he wished to be remembered, but today critics regard his novels as his most memorable contribution to English literature for their psychological insight, decisive delineation of character, and profound presentation of tragedy.  View titles by Thomas Hardy

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