Far from the Madding Crowd a frugal life, and a loan, he has leased and stocked a sheep farm. He falls in love with a newcomer eight years his junior, Bathsheba Everdene, a proud beauty who arrives to live with her aunt, Mrs. Hurst. Over time, Bathsheba and Gabriel grow to like each other well enough, and Bathsheba even saves his life once. However, when he makes her an unadorned offer of marriage, she refuses; she values her independence too much, and him too little. Feeling betrayed and embarrassed, Gabriel offers blunt protestations that only foster her haughtiness. After a few days, she moves to
The Trumpet-Major about the possibility of invasion by Napoleon. Of the two brothers, John fights with Wellington in the Peninsular War, and Bob serves with Nelson at Trafalgar. The Napoleonic Wars was a setting that Hardy would use again in his play, "The Dynasts", and it borrows from the same source material. Edward Neill has called the novel an attempt to repeat the success of his earlier work "Far from the Madding Crowd" (1874), after the limited success of his intervening works. It’s 1804 and England expects an invasion attempt by Napoleon Bonaparte’s armies. Near Budmouth (Weymouth) Anne Garland lives with her