Novel by Thomas Hardy, published serially and anonymously in 1874 in The Cornhill Magazine and published in book form under Hardy's name the same year. The Merriam-Webster Encyclopedia of Literature The background of this tale is the Wessex countryside in all its moods. This work tells the story of young farmer, Gabriel Oak, and his pursuit of the elusive Bathsheba Everdene, whose wayward nature lends her to both tragedy and true love. This edition presents a new text of the novel restoring several manuscript passages never before published with the novel, and many of the 1901 revisions missing from nearly all modern versions. Her choice, and the tragedy it provokes, lie at the centre of Hardy's ambivalent story. When the beautiful and spirited Bathsheba Everdene inherits her own farm, she attracts three very different suitors: the seemingly commonplace, man-of-the-soil Gabriel Oak, the dashing young soldier, Francis Troy, and the respectable, middle-aged Farmer Boldwood. Far from the Madding Crowd was the first of Hardy's novels to apply the name of Wessex to the landscape of south west England, and the first to gain him widespread popularity as a novelist.
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