The Mayor of Casterbridge

On the road to Weydon-Priors, a weary young family moves through Hardy's stark rural world in silence: Michael Henchard, his wife Susan, and their small child, Elizabeth-Jane. The dust on their clothes, his brooding self-absorption, and her patient burden-bearing immediately suggest a marriage strained by hardship and emotional poverty. When they reach the fair, the bustling, half-finished market shifts the story from quiet endurance to public danger. At a furmity tent, Henchard discovers the drink is laced with rum and quickly succumbs to reckless bravado. Bitterly blaming marriage for his failures, he turns a domestic quarrel into a grotesque auction, insisting on selling Susan. What begins as rough joke becomes horrifyingly real when a sailor offers money; Susan, humiliated but resolute, leaves with him and the child, flinging off her wedding ring. By dawn, Henchard is left with shame, fragments of memory, and a desperate vow to find his wife and to abstain from drink for twenty-one years. As the novel broadens beyond this shocking beginning, the hiring fair and market-place bring new entanglements: Donald Farfrae's kindness to a laborer and his sweetheart awakens Lucetta's admiration and flirtation, while Elizabeth-Jane settles into Lucetta's household, watching the market and waiting for Farfrae. Fashion, public spectacle, and private longing mingle as the human consequences of pride, chance, and desire unfold. This edition has been fully restored with modern typesetting, custom cover design.