The Mayor of Casterbridge [with Biographical Introduction]

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In London, he started to write and publish poetry. In , he returned to Dorset, working again as an architecture assistant, as he started to craft his first novel. He married his first wife, Emma Gifford, in , after meeting her on a business trip to Cornwall four years earlier.

In , the Hardys moved to London, so Thomas could join the thriving literary circles there. But by , Thomas Hardy had again returned to Dorset.

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There, in his beloved homeland, he wrote many of his major novels: For the thirty-two years of his life after the publication of Jude the Obscure , Hardy wrote only poetry and drama. Hardy remarried a woman named Florence Dugdale in Before his death in , Hardy was recognized as a major literary contributor of his time period and he was awarded the Order of Merit for his literary achievements in Thomas Hardy hoped to capture the lifestyles of Wessex County, particularly the farming practices, technologies, and the relationships farmers and villagers had with the land in England during the s.

Hardy lived in this area and used many realistic details in his novels. Eliot, than with his contemporaries. Lawrence was strongly influenced by Thomas Hardy. Retrieved December 17, May 25, Pages. Nov 29, Pages. In a fit of drunken rage, Michael Henchard, an out-of-work laborer, sells his wife and baby daughter to a passing sailor.

When the horror of what he has done dawns on him the next day, he determines to set his life on a different path, and through years of hard work and ambition rises to become the rich and respectable mayor of his town. Secret guilt continues to haunt this proud and brooding man, however, and when his wife and grown daughter return to Casterbridge, Henchard is set on the path to a dramatic confrontation with his own deeply flawed nature.

In a drunken rage, Michael Henchard sells his wife and daughter to a visiting sailor at a local fair. When they return to Casterbridge some nineteen years later, Henchard—having gained power and success as the mayor—finds he cannot erase the past or the guilt that consumes him.

The Mayor of Casterbridge is a rich, psychological novel about a man whose own flaws combine with fate to cause his ruin. Rooted in an actual case of wife-selling in early nineteenth-century England, the story build into an awesome Sophoclean drama of guilt and revenge, in which the strong, willful Henchard rises to a position of wealth and power—only to suffer a most bitter downfall.

The Mayor of Casterbridge: context links Contents

The Mayor of Casterbridge is a man haunted by his past. In his youth he betrayed his wife and baby daughter in a shocking incident that led him to swear never to touch alcohol again for twenty-one years. He has since risen from his humble origins to become a respected pillar of the community in Casterbridge, but his secrets cannot stay hidden forever. They also find his last written statement: The novel is set in the fictional town of Casterbridge, based on the town of Dorchester in Dorset.

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In the opening sentence of the novel, Hardy writes that the events took place "before the nineteenth century had reached one-third of its span". The literary critic Dale Kramer saw it as being set somewhat later — in the late s, corresponding to Hardy's youth in Dorchester. Hardy started work on The Mayor of Casterbridge in the spring of , after a three-year pause.

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It was issued with a small print run of only copies. Hardy himself felt that in his efforts to get an incident into almost every weekly instalment he had added events to the narrative somewhat too freely, resulting in over-elaboration. In her biography of Thomas Hardy, the author Claire Tomalin called the book a 'masterpiece', a deeply imagined dramatic and poetic work, with a narrative on a grand scale and paced with extraordinary moments.

Hardy's portrait of Henchard — depressive, black-tempered, self-destructive but also lovable as a child is lovable — she considered one of his strongest achievements. From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. The Mayor of Casterbridge First edition title page. Retrieved 14 June The Mayor of Casterbridge.

Oxford University Press, UK. The Mayor of Casterbridge". Retrieved 4 November Musical Times Publications Ltd.

The Mayor of Casterbridge

Basingstoke and New York, NY: Thomas Hardy's Mayor of Casterbridge: Tragedy or Social History? The case of the wife-sale in the Mayor of Casterbridge". Studies in the Novel. Menefee, Samuel P Thomas Hardy 's The Mayor of Casterbridge

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