Far From The Madding Crowd

Set in his fictional Wessex countryside in southwest England; Far from the Madding Crowd was Thomas Hardy's breakthrough work. Though it was first published anonymously in 1874; the quick and tremendous success of Far from the Madding Crowd persuaded Hardy to give up his first profession; architecture; to concentrate on writing fiction. The story of the ill-fated passions of the beautiful Bathsheba Everdene and her three suitors offers a spectacle of country life brimming with an energy and charm not customarily associated with Hardy.