The Mayor of Casterbridge (Collins Classics)BY THOMAS HARDY

One impulsive act at a country fair sets a man's entire life on a course he cannot later escape. The Mayor of Casterbridge by Thomas Hardy follows Michael Henchard from that early decision through years of respectability to the reckoning that arrives anyway. Hardy writes rural Victorian England with unusual precision, and the novel turns on guilt, pride, forgiveness and the question of how much of a life is genuinely chosen. Henchard is flawed enough to be hard to like and human enough to be hard to dismiss, which is why the book remains a fixture of literature courses. Things to expect: • The full text in the Collins Classics paperback series • A character study built around one irreversible choice • Detailed treatment of a Victorian market town and its trade • Themes of pride, guilt and consequence suited to essay work Well matched to literature students and readers of Victorian fiction, published in Collins Classics and available from Boipoka.