Under the Greenwood Tree

Before the tragedy, there was this: a love story. A village choir. And the happiest novel Thomas Hardy ever wrote.

Thomas Hardy’s second novel is a pastoral comedy, a warm, witty, and utterly charming tale of courtship, community, and the old ways fading into the new.

The Mellstock Quire is a group of local musicians—fiddlers, cellists, and singers—who have provided the music for the village church for generations. But the new vicar, the young and handsome Mr. Maybold, has decided that organs are more respectable than fiddles. The quire is being disbanded. Meanwhile, Dick Dewy, the quire’s young bass singer, has fallen in love with Fancy Day, the new schoolmistress, a beautiful, flirtatious young woman who is also being courted by the vicar and a wealthy farmer. The novel moves from a Christmas party to a May Day dance to a wedding that is both a beginning and an ending.

This is Hardy at his most light and lyrical: a novel about the loss of tradition, the foolishness of love, and the stubborn happiness that survives even when everything changes. Under the Greenwood Tree is the perfect introduction to Hardy—or the perfect palate cleanser after reading Jude the Obscure.

• Hardy’s second novel, published anonymously in 1872

• Subtitled “A Rural Painting of the Dutch School,” emphasizing its gentle, detailed, domestic tone

• A rare happy ending from the man who would later write Tess of the D’Urbervilles

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 old songs are worth remembering, even when the organ plays.

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. Under the Greenwood Tree was his second novel, following the unpublished The Poor Man and the Lady (1867) and his first published novel, Desperate Remedies(1871). Hardy considered the novel a “gentle” work, a contrast to the tragic vision that would dominate his later fiction. The title is taken from a song in Shakespeare’s As You Like It: “Under the greenwood tree / Who loves to lie with me.” Hardy later returned to darker themes in The Return of the Native (1878), Tess of the D’Urbervilles (1891), and Jude the Obscure (1895). 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.