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  • Published: 31 October 2000
  • ISBN: 9780679641506
  • Imprint: RH US eBook Adult
  • Format: EBook
  • Pages: 512

Far From the Madding Crowd




Launching a major new paperback series: Penguin English Library

Set in his fictional Wessex countryside in southwest England, Far from the Madding Crowd was Thomas Hardy's breakthrough work. Though it was first published anonymously in 1874, the quick and tremendous success of Far from the Madding Crowd persuaded Hardy to give up his first profession, architecture, to concentrate on writing fiction. The story of the ill-fated passions of the beautiful Bathsheba Everdene and her three suitors offers a spectacle of country life brimming with an energy and charm not customarily associated with Hardy. ('When Farmer Oak smiled,' the novel begins, 'the corners of his mouth spread till they were within an unimportant distance of his ears. . . .')

The text is based on the authoritative Wessex Edition of 1912, revised and corrected by Hardy himself.

This edition is the companion volume to the Mobil Masterpiece Theatre WGBH television presentation broadcast on PBS. It stars Paloma Baeza as Bathsheba Everdene, Nathaniel Parker as Gabriel Oak, Nigel Terry as Mr. Boldwood, and Jonathan Firth as Frank Troy. Adapted by Philomena McDonagh, Far from the Madding Crowd is directed by Nick Renton.

  • Published: 31 October 2000
  • ISBN: 9780679641506
  • Imprint: RH US eBook Adult
  • Format: EBook
  • Pages: 512

Other books in the series

Emma
Persuasion
The Black Tulip
The Lady of the Camellias
Selected Poetry
On Sparta
Man and Superman
Saint Joan
Love
Annals
Military Dispatches

About the author

Thomas Hardy

Thomas Hardy was born in Dorset in 1840 and became an apprentice architect at the age of sixteen. He spent his twenties in London, where he wrote his first poems. In 1867 Hardy returned to his native Dorset, whose rugged landscape was a great source of inspiration for his writing. Between 1871 and 1897 he wrote fourteen novels, including Tess of the D'Urbervilles and Jude the Obscure. This final work was received savagely; thereafter Hardy turned away from novels and spent the last thirty year of his life focusing on poetry. He died in 1928.

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