The Mayor of Casterbridge

In a moment of drunken shame, Michael Henchard sells his wife and infant daughter to a stranger at a country fair. When he wakes the next morning and realizes what he has done, he swears an oath to give up drink for twenty-one years – and sets out to remake himself entirely.

Published in 1886, Thomas Hardy’s novel follows Henchard as he rises to become a prosperous grain merchant and the mayor of the rural market town of Casterbridge. But the past he tried to bury returns when his wife and daughter reappear, and when the arrival of a shrewd young Scotsman named Donald Farfrae threatens both his business and his standing in the community. Hardy charts Henchard’s decline with the relentless momentum of a Greek tragedy, as every attempt the proud, hot-tempered man makes to hold onto power and affection only drives them further away.

One of Hardy’s most powerful novels, The Mayor of Casterbridge is a devastating portrait of a man undone by his own character in a world that offers no second chances.