MAYOR OF CASTERBRIDGE

Hardy's powerful study of the heroic but deeply flawed Michael Henchard is an intensely dramatic work, tragically played out against the vivid backdrop of a close-knit Dorsetshire town. Its events are set in motion when, in a fit of drunken anger, 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 pillar of the community of Casterbridge, but behind his success lurks the shameful secret of his past. None of the great Victorian novels is more vivid and readable than the Mayor of Casterbridge. Set in the heart of Hardy's Wessex, the 'partly real, partly dream country' he founded on his native Dorset, it charts the rise and self-induced downfall of a single 'man of character'. 270pp. Paperback.