On the Western Circuit (Annotated)

Thomas Hardy's "On the Western Circuit" is a finely wrought short story of desire, deception, and social misreading, set between the festive atmosphere of a country fair and the legal world of the travelling assizes. Its plot turns on a poignant epistolary illusion: a barrister's infatuation with a servant girl is sustained by letters actually written by her educated mistress. Hardy's prose combin...