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: Lucetta Templeman, Elizabeth-Jane Newson, Richard Newson, Susan Henchard, Donald Farfrae, Michael Henchard
genres: Classics, British Literature, Novels, Classic Literature, Historical Fiction, Literature, 19th Century, Fiction, Victorian, Literary Fiction
ratings_count: 61202
places: Dorset, England, United Kingdom, Wessex, England
publisher: Blackstone Publishing