The Mayor of Casterbridge

From its spectacular opening-the astonishing scene in which drunken Michael Henchard sells his wife and daughter to a passing sailor at a county fair-to the breathtaking series of discoveries at its conclusion, The Mayor of Casterbridge claims a unique place among Thomas Hardy's finest and most powerful novels.

Rooted in an actual case of wife-selling in early nineteenth-century England, the story build into an awesome Sophoclean drama of guilt and revenge, in which the strong, willful Henchard rises to a position of wealth and power-only to suffer a most bitter downfall. Proud, obsessed, ultimately committed to his own destruction, Henchard is, as Albert Guerard has said, "Hardy's Lord Jim...his only tragic hero and one of the greatest tragic heroes in all fiction.

Binding Type: Paperback
Publisher: Bantam Classics
Published: 03/01/1981
ISBN: 9780553210248
Pages: 352
Weight: 0.39lbs
Size: 6.89h x 4.27w x 0.77d

Review Citations: Entertainment Weekly 11/13/2015 pg. 65

Accelerated Reader Quiz #/Name: 10040 / Mayor of Casterbridge
Reading Level: 9.5 / Interest Level: Upper Grade / Point Value: 22