Far From the Madding Crowd (Collins Classics)

Bathsheba Everdene takes up her position on the largest estate around Weatherbury, runs it herself, and finds three men rearranging their lives around that decision. Gabriel Oak the shepherd, Boldwood the gentleman-farmer and Sergeant Troy each press a different claim, and Hardy measures the consequences across a rural community that cannot absorb them quietly. Harvests, storms and seasonal labour are described with the precision that made his Wessex convincing, and the treatment of desire is unusually direct for its period. Thomas Hardy's first major success appears here in the Collins Classics series. Reasons it travels well: • An independent woman running a large farm on her own terms • Three suitors whose rivalry unsettles an entire parish • Hardy's detailed rendering of Wessex landscape and agricultural work • A candid treatment of attraction and the damage it can do Suited to readers of Victorian fiction, literature students and collectors of the Collins Classics series. Available at Boipoka.