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.
Walter Harris (author) Walter Harris (author) Walter Harris (born 1925) is a British author and broadcaster. He is the author of ten published novels, several volumes of poetry, numerous articles and spoken word recordings. Recordings of his interviews and broadcasts are held at the BBC Sound Archive and the British Library. Harris joined the RAF directly from Haileybury in 1943. In Cairo he was German interpreter to Africa Korps POWs and playwright in RAF Repertory Company and news reader on the Forces Network. Post War, Harris emigrated to Brazil and wrote for two English-language newspapers until being sponsored by a major Canadian-owned public