Far from the Madding Crowd

A woman who cannot choose. Three men who cannot let her go. And the novel that made Thomas Hardy famous.

Thomas Hardy’s first great success is a story of love, pride, and the violent passions that simmer beneath the surface of rural life, a pastoral that turns, again and again, into tragedy.

Bathsheba Everdene is young, beautiful, proud, and utterly determined to manage her own farm. She inherits her uncle’s estate and runs it alone, rejecting the advice of men and the constraints of convention. Three men fall in love with her: Gabriel Oak, a patient, faithful shepherd who loves her quietly and well; Sergeant Troy, a handsome, reckless soldier who seduces her and destroys her; and William Boldwood, a prosperous, repressed farmer whose obsession turns to madness. Bathsheba makes the wrong choice. The novel moves from sheep dying in snowstorms to a woman fainting in a coffin to a man shot dead by his rival. Hardy builds toward a final image: Gabriel Oak, standing alone in the rain, watching the woman he loves walk away.

This is Hardy at his most balanced and accessible: a novel about the folly of pride, the danger of passion, and the quiet heroism of the man who waits. Far from the Madding Crowd is the novel where Hardy learned to see tragedy in the fields and shepherds’ huts of Wessex.

• Hardy’s fourth novel, published in 1874, his first critical and commercial success

• The novel that allowed Hardy to give up architecture and write full-time

• Adapted into multiple films, including a 1967 version starring Julie Christie and a 2015 version starring Carey Mulligan

Available in multiple formats:

• Paperback & Hardcover: Beautifully designed print editions presenting the complete, unabridged text made to last.

• Ebook: DRM-free EPUB compatible with Kindle, Kobo, Apple Books, and all major e-readers.

• Audiobook: Professionally narrated, complete and unabridged, available on all major audiobook platforms.

A beautifully crafted edition for your shelf, your device, or your ears—or the perfect gift for anyone who knows that the madding crowd is not in the city; it is in the heart.

About the Author

Thomas Hardy (1840–1928) was an English novelist and poet, one of the greatest writers of the Victorian era. Born in Dorset, the son of a stonemason, he trained as an architect before turning to writing. His novels are set in the semi-fictional region of “Wessex,” based on the rural countryside of southwestern England. Far from the Madding Crowd was his first major success, published anonymously in serial form in 1874. The novel’s positive reception allowed Hardy to marry his first wife, Emma Gifford, and to devote himself entirely to literature. His later novels—The Return of the Native (1878), The Mayor of Casterbridge (1886), Tess of the D’Urbervilles (1891), and Jude the Obscure (1895)—grew darker and more fatalistic. After the hostile reception of Jude, Hardy abandoned fiction and wrote poetry for the remaining 30 years of his life. He died in 1928; his ashes are buried in Poets’ Corner at Westminster Abbey, but his heart is buried separately in Dorset, beside his first wife.