Far from the Madding Crowd she screams. At this, Boldwood shoots Troy dead and tries unsuccessfully to turn the gun on himself. Although Boldwood is convicted of murder and sentenced to be hanged, his friends petition the Home Secretary for mercy, claiming insanity. This is granted, and Boldwood's sentence is commuted to "confinement during Her Majesty's pleasure". Bathsheba, profoundly chastened by guilt and grief, buries her husband in the same grave as Fanny Robin and her child and adds a suitable inscription. Throughout her tribulations, Bathsheba comes to rely increasingly on her oldest and, as she admits to herself, only real friend, Gabriel. When he
A Pair of Blue Eyes Hardy's novels to be published and the first to bear his name. It was first serialised in "Tinsley's Magazine" between September 1872 and July 1873. The novel is notable for the strong parallels to Hardy and his first wife Emma Gifford. In fact, of Hardy's early novels, this is probably the most densely populated with autobiographical events. A review in the "Examiner" of "Far from the Madding Crowd" retrospectively referred to it as 'not so exclusively pictoral [as "Under the Greenwood Tree"]; it was study of a more tragic kind, with more complex characters and a more stirring plot... Both