Far from the Madding Crowd, Thomas Hardy [best ereader for pdf txt] 📗

Far from the Madding Crowd

By Thomas Hardy.

Table of Contents Titlepage Imprint Preface Far from the Madding Crowd I: Description of Farmer Oak; An Incident II: Night; The Flock; An Interior; Another Interior III: A Girl on Horseback; Conversation IV: Gabriel’s Resolve; The Visit; The Mistake V: Departure of Bathsheba; A Pastoral Tragedy VI: The Fair; The Journey; The Fire VII: Recognition; A Timid Girl VIII: The Malthouse; The Chat; News IX: The Homestead; A Visitor; Half-Confidences X: Mistress and Men XI: Outside the Barracks; Snow; A Meeting XII: Farmers; A Rule; An Exception XIII: Sortes Sanctorum; The Valentine XIV: Effect of the Letter; Sunrise XV: A Morning Meeting; The Letter Again XVI: All Saints’ and All Souls’ XVII: In the Market-Place XVIII: Boldwood in Meditation; Regret XIX: The Sheep-Washing; The Offer XX: Perplexity; Grinding the Shears; A Quarrel XXI: Troubles in the Fold; A Message XXII: The Great Barn and the Sheep-Shearers XXIII: Eventide; A Second Declaration XXIV: The Same Night; The Fir Plantation XXV: The New Acquaintance Described XXVI: Scene on the Verge of the Hay-Mead XXVII: Hiving the Bees XXVIII: The Hollow Amid the Ferns XXIX: Particulars of a Twilight Walk XXX: Hot Cheeks and Tearful Eyes XXXI: Blame; Fury XXXII: Night; Horses Tramping XXXIII: In the Sun; A Harbinger XXXIV: Home Again; A Trickster XXXV: At an Upper Window XXXVI: Wealth in Jeopardy; The Revel XXXVII: The Storm; The Two Together XXXVIII: Rain; One Solitary Meets Another XXXIX: Coming Home; A Cry XL: On Casterbridge Highway XLI: Suspicion; Fanny Is Sent For XLII: Joseph and His Burden; Buck’s Head XLIII: Fanny’s Revenge XLIV: Under a Tree; Reaction XLV: Troy’s Romanticism XLVI: The Gurgoyle: Its Doings XLVII: Adventures by the Shore XLVIII: Doubts Arise; Doubts Linger XLIX: Oak’s Advancement; A Great Hope L: The Sheep Fair; Troy Touches His Wife’s Hand LI: Bathsheba Talks with Her Outrider LII: Converging Courses LIII: Concurritur; Horae Momento LIV: After the Shock LV: The March Following; “Bathsheba Boldwood” LVI: Beauty in Loneliness; After All LVII: A Foggy Night and Morning; Conclusion Endnotes Colophon Uncopyright Imprint

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Preface

In reprinting this story for a new edition I am reminded that it was in the chapters of Far from the Madding Crowd, as they appeared month by month in a popular magazine, that I first ventured to adopt the word “Wessex” from the pages of early English history, and give it a fictitious significance as the existing name of the district once included in that extinct kingdom. The series of novels I projected being mainly of the kind called local, they seemed to require a territorial definition of some sort to lend unity to their scene. Finding that the area of a single county did not afford a canvas large enough for this purpose, and that there were objections to an invented name, I disinterred the old one. The press and the public were kind enough to welcome the fanciful plan, and willingly joined me in the anachronism of imagining a Wessex population living under Queen Victoria;⁠—a modern Wessex of railways, the penny post, mowing and reaping machines, union workhouses, lucifer matches, labourers who could read and write, and National School children. But I believe I am correct in stating that, until the existence of this contemporaneous Wessex was announced in the present story, in 1874, it had never been heard of, and that the expression, “a Wessex peasant,” or “a Wessex custom,” would theretofore have been taken to refer to nothing later in date than the Norman Conquest.

I did not anticipate that this application of the word to a modern use would extend outside the chapters of my own chronicles. But the name was soon taken up elsewhere as a local designation. The first to do so was the now defunct Examiner, which, in the impression bearing date July 15, 1876, entitled one of its articles “The Wessex Labourer,” the article turning out to be no dissertation on farming during the Heptarchy, but on the modern peasant of the south-west counties, and his presentation in these stories.

Since then the appellation which I had thought to reserve to the horizons and landscapes of a merely realistic dream-country, has become more and more popular as a practical definition; and the dream-country has, by degrees, solidified into a utilitarian region which people can go to, take a house in, and write to the papers from. But I ask all good and gentle readers to be so kind as to forget this, and to refuse steadfastly to believe that there are any inhabitants of a Victorian Wessex outside the pages of this and the companion volumes in which they