Far from the Madding Crowd Far from the Madding Crowd Far from the Madding Crowd (1874) is Thomas Hardy's fourth novel and his first major literary success. It originally appeared anonymously as a monthly serial in "Cornhill Magazine", where it gained a wide readership. The novel is the first to be set in Hardy's fictional region of Wessex in rural south west England. It deals in themes of love, honour and betrayal, against a backdrop of the seemingly idyllic, but often harsh, realities of a farming community in Victorian England. It describes the farmer Bathsheba Everdene, her life and relationships – especially with her lonely
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