Far from the Madding Crowd

There are two editions of this ebook in the Project Gutenberg collection. Various characteristics of each ebook are listed to aid in selecting the preferred file.

PREFACE Chapter I. Description of Farmer Oak—An Incident Chapter II. Night—The Flock—An Interior—Another Interior Chapter III. A Girl on Horseback—Conversation Chapter IV. Gabriel’s Resolve—The Visit—The Mistake Chapter V. Departure of Bathsheba—A Pastoral Tragedy Chapter VI. The Fair—The Journey—The Fire Chapter VII. Recognition—A Timid Girl Chapter VIII. The Malthouse—The Chat—News Chapter IX. The Homestead—A Visitor—Half-Confidences Chapter X. Mistress and Men Chapter XI. Outside the Barracks—Snow—A Meeting Chapter XII. Farmers—A Rule—An Exception Chapter XIII. Sortes Sanctorum—The Valentine Chapter XIV. Effect of the Letter—Sunrise Chapter XV. A Morning Meeting—The Letter Again Chapter XVI. All Saints’ and All Souls’ Chapter XVII. In the Market-Place Chapter XVIII. Boldwood in Meditation—Regret Chapter XIX. The Sheep-Washing—The Offer Chapter XX. Perplexity—Grinding the Shears—A Quarrel Chapter XXI. Troubles in the Fold—A Message Chapter XXII. The Great Barn and the Sheep-Shearers Chapter XXIII. Eventide—A Second Declaration Chapter XXIV. The Same Night—The Fir Plantation Chapter XXV. The New Acquaintance Described Chapter XXVI. Scene on the Verge of the Hay-Mead Chapter XXVII. Hiving the Bees Chapter XXVIII. The Hollow Amid the Ferns Chapter XXIX. Particulars of a Twilight Walk Chapter XXX. Hot Cheeks and Tearful Eyes Chapter XXXI. Blame—Fury Chapter XXXII. Night—Horses Tramping Chapter XXXIII. In the Sun—A Harbinger Chapter XXXIV. Home Again—A Trickster Chapter XXXV. At an Upper Window Chapter XXXVI. Wealth in Jeopardy—The Revel Chapter XXXVII. The Storm—The Two Together Chapter XXXVIII. Rain—One Solitary Meets Another Chapter XXXIX. Coming Home—A Cry Chapter XL. On Casterbridge Highway Chapter XLI. Suspicion—Fanny Is Sent For Chapter XLII. Joseph and His Burden—Buck’s Head Chapter XLIII. Fanny’s Revenge Chapter XLIV. Under a Tree—Reaction Chapter XLV. Troy’s Romanticism Chapter XLVI. The Gurgoyle: Its Doings Chapter XLVII. Adventures by the Shore Chapter XLVIII. Doubts Arise—Doubts Linger Chapter XLIX. Oak’s Advancement—A Great Hope Chapter L. The Sheep Fair—Troy Touches His Wife’s Hand Chapter LI. Bathsheba Talks with Her Outrider Chapter LII. Converging Courses Chapter LIII. Concurritur—Horæ Momento Chapter LIV. After the Shock Chapter LV. The March Following—“Bathsheba Boldwood” Chapter LVI. Beauty in Loneliness—After All Chapter LVII. A Foggy Night and Morning—Conclusion

In reprinting this story for a new edition I am reminded that it was in the chapters of “Far from the Madding Crowd,” as they appeared month by month in a popular magazine, that I first ventured to adopt the word “Wessex” from the pages of early English history, and give it a fictitious significance as the existing name of the district once included in that extinct kingdom. The series of novels I projected being mainly of the kind called local, they seemed to require a territorial definition of some sort to lend unity to their scene. Finding that the area of a single county did not afford a canvas large enough for this purpose, and that there were objections to an invented name, I disinterred the old one. The press and the public were kind enough to welcome the fanciful plan, and willingly joined me in the anachronism of imagining a Wessex population living under Queen Victoria;—a modern Wessex of railways, the penny post, mowing and reaping machines, union workhouses, lucifer matches, labourers who could read and write, and National school children. But I believe I am correct in stating that, until the existence of this contemporaneous Wessex was announced in the present story, in 1874, it had never been heard of, and that the expression, “a Wessex peasant,” or “a Wessex custom,” would theretofore have been taken to refer to nothing later in date than the Norman Conquest.

I did not anticipate that this application of the word to a modern use would extend outside the chapters of my own chronicles. But the name was soon taken up elsewhere as a local designation. The first to do so was the now defunct _Examiner_, which, in the impression bearing date July 15, 1876, entitled one of its articles “The Wessex Labourer,” the article turning out to be no dissertation on farming during the Heptarchy, but on the modern peasant of the south-west counties, and his presentation in these stories.

Since then the appellation which I had thought to reserve to the horizons and landscapes of a merely realistic dream-country, has become more and more popular as a practical definition; and the dream-country has, by degrees, solidified into a utilitarian region which people can go to, take a house in, and write to the papers from. But I ask all good and gentle readers to be so kind as to forget this, and to refuse steadfastly to believe that there are any inhabitants of a Victorian Wessex outside the pages of this and the companion volumes in which they were first discovered.

Moreover, the village called Weatherbury, wherein the scenes of the present story of the series are for the most part laid, would perhaps be hardly discernible by the explorer, without help, in any existing place nowadays; though at the time, comparatively recent, at which the tale was written, a sufficient reality to meet the descriptions, both of backgrounds and personages, might have been traced easily enough. The church remains, by great good fortune, unrestored and intact, and a few of the old houses; but the ancient malt-house, which was formerly so characteristic of the parish, has been pulled down these twenty years; also most of the thatched and dormered cottages that were once lifeholds. The game of prisoner’s base, which not so long ago seemed to enjoy a perennial vitality in front of the worn-out stocks, may, so far as I can say, be entirely unknown to the rising generation of schoolboys there. The practice of divination by Bible and key, the regarding of valentines as things of serious import, the shearing-supper, and the harvest-home, have, too, nearly disappeared in the wake of the old houses; and with them have gone, it is said, much of that love of fuddling to which the village at one time was notoriously prone. The change at the root of this has been the recent supplanting of the class of stationary cottagers, who carried on the local traditions and humours, by a population of more or less migratory labourers, which has led to a break of continuity in local history, more fatal than any other thing to the preservation of legend, folk-lore, close inter-social relations, and eccentric individualities. For these the indispensable conditions of existence are attachment to the soil of one particular spot by generation after generation.