Far from the Madding Crowd

By Hardy, Thomas

Book Id: WPLBN0000615340
Format Type: PDF eBook
File Size: 1.3 MB
Reproduction Date:

Title:	Far from the Madding Crowd
Author:	Hardy, Thomas
Volume:
Language:	English
Subject:	Literature & thought, Literature and history, Literature & philosophy
Collections:	Project Gutenberg Consortia Center
Historic Publication Date:
Publisher:	Project Gutenberg Consortia Center


Citation APA MLA Chicago Hardy, T. (n.d.). Far from the Madding Crowd. Retrieved from https://self.gutenberg.org/

Description
Preface: 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 country 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, laborers wh