Far From the Madding Crowd
by Thomas Hardy
First published 1874 · English · 433 pages
- Novels
- Historical fiction
- Love and romance
A novel of farming life in Wessex. Bathsheba Everdene, a spirited young woman, unexpectedly inherits a farm and chooses to run it herself. Three very different men seek her hand: Gabriel Oak, a steady shepherd, William Boldwood, a reserved and wealthy neighbour, and Sergeant Troy, a dashing soldier. Her choices bring complications for all of them. Hardy mixes humour, romance, and the rhythms of the seasons, and it was his first major success.
Quotes
tell you. It is difficult for a woman to define her feelings in language which is chiefly made by men to express theirs.
A resolution to avoid an evil is seldom framed till the evil is so far advanced as to make avoidance impossible.
At home by the fire, whenever you look up there I shall be—and whenever I look up, there will be you.
Love is a possible strength, in an actual weakness. Marriage transforms a distraction into a support, the power of which should be, and happily often is, in direct proportion to the degree of imbecility it supplants.