Far from the Madding Crowd

by Hardy, Thomas; Morgan, Rosemarie

• ISBN13: 9780140435214
• ISBN10: 0140435212
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2000-09-01
• Publisher: Penguin Classics

Summary

This Norton Critical Edition is based on the 1912 Wessex edition, emended to correct errors which have crept into the text from the manuscript onward.

Author Biography

Thomas Hardy was born on June 2, 1840. In his writing, he immortalized the site of his birth—Egdon Heath, in Dorset, near Dorchester. Delicate as a child, he was taught at home by his mother before he attended grammar school. At sixteen, Hardy was apprenticed to an architect, and for many years, architecture was his profession; in his spare time, he pursued his first and last literary love, poetry. Finally convinced that he could earn his living as an author, he retired from architecture, married, and devoted himself to writing. An extremely productive novelist, Hardy published an important book every year or two. In 1896, disturbed by the public outcry over the unconventional subjects of his two greatest novels—Tess of the D’Urbervilles and Jude the Obscure—he announced that he was giving up fiction and afterward produced only poetry. In later years, he received many honors. He died on January 11, 1928, and was buried in Poet’s Corner, in Westminster Abbey. It was as a poet that he wished to be remembered, but today critics regard his novels as his most memorable contribution to English literature for their psychological insight, decisive delineation of character, and profound presentation of tragedy.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgements	vi
General Editor's Preface	vii
Chronology: Hardy's Life and Works	x
Map: The Wessex of the Novels	xiv
Bibliographical Note	xv
Introduction	xvii
A Note on the History of the Text	xxxiii
Far From the Madding Crowd	1	(353)
Notes	354	(38)
Appendix I: Preface	392	(4)
Appendix II: The Surviving Draft-Fragments of Far From the Madding Crowd	396	(17)
Appendix III: Chapter XVI in the Cornhill magazine	413	(3)
Appendix IV: A Note on the First Illustrator of Far From the Madding Crowd: Helen Paterson	416	(6)
Glossary	422