📖 Far from the Madding Crowd

Despite the violent ends of several of its major characters, Far from the Madding Crowd is the sunniest and least brooding of Hardy's great novels. The strong-minded Bathsheba Everdene and the devoted shepherd, obsessed farmer, and dashing soldier who vie for her favor move through a beautifully realized late nineteenth-century agrarian landscape, still almost untouched by the industrial revolution and the encroachment of modern life.