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Bathsheba Everdene, independent and uncompromising, comes to a small rural community to take up a position as a farmer, where her confident presence draws three different suitors: the gentleman-farmer Boldwood, the seducer Sergeant Troy and devoted shepherd Gabriel Oak. As each man complicates her life, Bathsheba becomes an object of betrayal.

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The Penguin English Library Edition of Far From the Madding Crowd by Thomas Hardy

´I cannot allow any man to - to criticise my private conduct!´ she exclaimed. ´Nor will I for a minute´

Hardy´s powerful novel of swift sexual passion and slow-burning loyalty centres on Bathsheba Everdene, a proud working woman whose life is complicated by three different men - respectable farmer Boldwood, seductive Sergeant Troy and devoted Gabriel - making her the object of scandal and betrayal. Vividly portraying the superstitions and traditions of a small rural community, Far from the Madding Crowd shows the precarious position of a woman in a man´s world.

The Penguin English Library - 100 editions of the best fiction in English, from the eighteenth century and the very first novels to the beginning of the First World War.

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Hardy, Thomas
Thomas Hardy was born in Dorset in 1840 and became an apprentice architect at the age of sixteen. He spent his twenties in London, where he wrote his first poems. In 1867 Hardy returned to his native Dorset, whose rugged landscape was a great source of inspiration for his writing. Between 1871 and 1897 he wrote fourteen novels, including Tess of the D´Urbervilles and Jude the Obscure. This final work was received savagely; thereafter Hardy turned away from novels and spent the last thirty year of his life focusing on poetry. He died in 1928.

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