The Mayor of Casterbridge The Mayor of Casterbridge The Mayor of Casterbridge: The Life and Death of a Man of Character is an 1886 novel by the English author Thomas Hardy. One of Hardy's Wessex novels, it is set in a fictional rural England with Casterbridge standing in for Dorchester in Dorset where the author spent his youth. It was first published as a weekly serialisation from January 1886. The novel is considered to be one of the Hardy's masterpieces, although it has been criticised for incorporating too many incidents: a consequence of the author trying to include something in every weekly published instalment.
Richard Gordon (English author) Richard Gordon (English author) Richard Gordon (born Gordon Stanley Benton, 15 September 1921 – 11 August 2017 and also known Gordon Stanley Ostlere), was an English surgeon and anaesthetist. As Richard Gordon, Ostlere wrote numerous novels, screenplays for film and television and accounts of popular history, mostly dealing with the practice of medicine. He was best known for a long series of comic novels on a medical theme beginning with "Doctor in the House", and the subsequent film, television, radio and stage adaptations. His "The Alarming History of Medicine" was published in 1993, and he followed this with "The Alarming