Far from the Madding Crowd (Summarized Edition)

Set in Hardy's Wessex, Far from the Madding Crowd follows Bathsheba Everdene—newly independent mistress of Weatherbury farm—and three men who orbit her: steadfast Gabriel Oak, haunted farmer William Boldwood, and dazzling Sergeant Troy. The novel renews the Victorian pastoral through granular detail, an ironic yet compassionate narrator, and motifs in which weather, toil, and chance govern fate. I...