num_pages: 346
description: ‘ I’ve not always been what I am now ’In a fit of drunken anger, Michael Henchard sells his wife and baby daughter for five guineas at a country fair. Over the course of the following years, he manages to establish himself as a respected and prosperous pillar of the community of Casterbridge, but behind his success there always lurk the shameful secret of his past and a personality prone to self-destructive pride and temper. Subtitled ‘A Story of a Man of Character’, Hardy’s powerful and sympathetic study of the heroic but deeply flawed Henchard is also an intensely dramatic work, tragically played out against the vivid backdrop of a close-knit Dorsetshire town.
language: English
title: The Mayor of Casterbridge
titlecomplete: The Mayor of Casterbridge
characters: Elizabeth-Jane Newson, Donald Farfrae, Susan Henchard, Richard Newson, Michael Henchard, Lucetta Templeman
genres: Fiction, British Literature, Classic Literature, Literature, Classics, Novels, 19th Century, Historical Fiction, Literary Fiction, Victorian
ratings_count: 61193
places: Wessex, England, Dorset, England, United Kingdom
publisher: Heinemann Educational Books - Secondary Division