Thomas Hardy
Paperback | Pages: 445 pages Rating: 3.82 | 52328 Users | 2076 Reviews
Specify About Books The Mayor of Casterbridge
| Title | : | The Mayor of Casterbridge |
| Author | : | Thomas Hardy |
| Book Format | : | Paperback |
| Book Edition | : | Penguin Classics |
| Pages | : | Pages: 445 pages |
| Published | : | March 27th 2003 by Penguin Books Ltd (first published 1886) |
| Categories | : | Classics. Fiction. Literature. 19th Century |
Commentary In Pursuance Of Books The Mayor of Casterbridge
‘I’ve not always been what I am now’In a fit of drunken anger, Michael Henchard sells his wife and baby daughter for five guineas at a country fair. Over the course of the following years, he manages to establish himself as a respected and prosperous pillar of the community of Casterbridge, but behind his success there always lurk the shameful secret of his past and a personality prone to self-destructive pride and temper. Subtitled ‘A Story of a Man of Character’, Hardy’s powerful and sympathetic study of the heroic but deeply flawed Henchard is also an intensely dramatic work, tragically played out against the vivid backdrop of a close-knit Dorsetshire town.
This edition includes an introduction, chronology of Hardy’s life and works, the illustrations for the original Serial Issue, place names, maps, glossary, full explanatory notes as well as Hardy’s prefaces to the 1895 and 1912 editions.
Define Books Concering The Mayor of Casterbridge
| Original Title: | The Mayor of Casterbridge |
| ISBN: | 0141439785 (ISBN13: 9780141439785) |
| Edition Language: | English |
| Characters: | Michael Henchard, Donald Farfrae, Elizabeth-Jane Newson, Susan Henchard, Lucetta Templeman, Richard Newson |
| Setting: | United Kingdom Wessex, England Casterbridge, England |
Rating About Books The Mayor of Casterbridge
Ratings: 3.82 From 52328 Users | 2076 ReviewsAssessment About Books The Mayor of Casterbridge
I felt like Id been in a Hardy-slump lately, in my attempt to read 1 Hardy novel a month this year, so veered off the schedule and read this when I was meant to be reading The Trumpet-Major. Like every Hardy novel, The Mayor of Casterbridge is another case of extreme dramatics attempting to illustrate a point.This reads somewhat different to previous Hardy novels that had become slightly repetitive for me. Instead of the concentration being on an individual female, the main protagonist is a maleI'd heard Hardy was a bit of a chore, so instead of his chunky novels I went slender with The Mayor of Casterbridge as my first. I'm not sure it was a wise choice. Not because I thought it was bad by any means. The writing's quite good, the story held my interest, but jeez louise, this is bleak stuff! It's bleaker than Bleak House! Are all this books like this? I'm not normally depressed, but I may have to put myself on suicide watch just to get through another one of his novels!Seriously
this is hardy's most perfectly-constructed novel. there are others that are more appealing, to me, (am i allowed to say that?), but this one is such a perfect cause-and-effect, every-action-has-a-reaction kind of book, that it should really be his most popular and successful, instead of tess, which by comparison, is pure melodrama. mayor is full of the trappings of melodrama - convenient and inexplicable deaths, characters long out of the picture returning at the least opportune times, overheard
Michael Henchard an itinerant, young, annoyed farm worker, walking with quiet wife Susan, infant daughter Elizabeth -Jane, looking for employment, the time, the early 1830's, in southern England, after an exhausting journey they reach a country fair, in a small village, enter a crowded tent, with dubious humans, serving alcohol, he imbibes vigorously, (a weakness that will cause much trouble, and haunt him the rest of his life) soon inebriated, the highly distressed man, in a stupor, sells Susan
If Thomas Hardy's Wessex region was a real place the British government would probably have to nuke it as nothing but misery seems to go on there, as recounted in Tess of the d'Urbervilles, Jude the Obscure, The Return of the Native and other bleak-fests (I am excluding Far from the Madding Crowd here because I find it quite cheerful by his melancholic standard (only a few tissue papers required instead of a whole box of Kleenex). The Mayor of Casterbridge is Hardy at least wonderfully
When I began this book I have to admit that I didn't think the three words I'd be using to describe it would be drama, excitement and intrigue . In fact, I really had no intention of reading this book at all any time soon as a friend of mine had to study it in school as a teenager and told me it's the worst book she's ever read and that had stayed with me and filed into the "don't bother" part of my brain. So then, just before Christmas I saw or heard something about this book and that it was
This is my favorite Hardy by far. I loved everyones evolving relationships and families. I loved the psychological depth to Mr Henchard. I loved the morbid imagery that pervaded the setting and scenes. I couldnt anticipate the plot. I loved how the end was bittersweet. The narrator of my audiobook, Pamela Garelick, really brought the characters to life.
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