The Mayor of Casterbridge: The Man Who Sold His Wife

It begins with one of the most shocking scenes in Victorian fiction. A drunken young labourer, resentful of the burden of his family, auctions off his wife and baby daughter to a passing sailor for five guineas — and wakes the next morning sober, appalled, and alone. Out of that single act of folly Thomas Hardy builds The Mayor of Casterbridge, his great tragedy of a man haunted by his own worst moment.

Michael Henchard swears off drink, works his way up, and becomes the respected mayor of a country town — but the past he sold is not done with him. When his wife and daughter return, and a clever younger rival appears, Henchard’s own violent, proud, self-destructive nature does the rest. He is one of Hardy’s finest creations: not a victim of fate alone, like Tess, but a man who is his own doom, undone by the flaws he cannot master. Hardy called the book the story of ‘a man of character’ — and shows how character, in the wrong grain, is destiny.

It is the most Shakespearean of Hardy’s novels, a fall from height as complete and pitiless as any tragedy, and its ruined, defiant hero is unforgettable.

This edition gathers it beside The Return of the Native in Hardy’s five major novels.

Read Thomas Hardy: Five Major Novels →