Far from the Madding Crowd

Far from the Madding Crowd, first serialised anonymously in the Cornhill Magazine in 1874, is Thomas Hardy's first great Wessex novel. Bathsheba Everdene, a proud and independent young woman, arrives in the Dorset village of Weatherbury and unexpectedly inherits her uncle's farm. Rather than hire a bailiff, she runs it herself, with the help of Gabriel Oak, a shepherd she once turned down who has since lost his own flock and his living.

Three men want to marry her. Oak offers steady, unspoken devotion. William Boldwood, a prosperous and solitary neighbouring farmer, is stirred out of his reserve by a careless valentine. Sergeant Frank Troy, a charming and reckless soldier, wins her attention with flattery and swordplay. Her choices, and the pasts of those around her, including the servant Fanny Robin, carry consequences for the whole community.

Hardy sets a love story against the seasons of farm work, shearing, harvest and storm, and uses it to weigh independence against affection and idyll against hardship. It suits readers of Victorian classics who like character-driven novels with a strong rural setting.