Far from the Madding Crowd [Paperback]

Graced with the splendid illustrations executed by Helen Paterson for the first edition of the novel, this special Collector's Edition ofFar from the Madding Crowdalso features handwritten letters and drawings by Hardy, as well as rare and intimate portraits of the author and his first wife, Emma. Here, too, readers are granted a fascinating and touching glimpse of how two great imaginative writers interact with one another: This edition reproduces the handwritten pages from Virginia Woolf's diary in which she recounts her now-famous visit with the very aged Thomas Hardy at his home, Max Gate, in 1926.“Far from the Madding Crowdis the first of Thomas Hardy’s great novels, and the first to sound the tragic note
for which his fiction is best remembered.”
-Margaret DrabbleMargaret Drabble editedThe Oxford Companion to English LiteratureandThe Genius of Thomas Hardy. Her novels includeThe WaterfallandThe Gates of Ivory, and, most recently,The Witch of Exmoor and The Peppered Moth. She lives in England.Chapter I Description of Farmer Oak—An Incident

When Farmer Oak smiled, the corners of his mouth spread till they were within an unimportant distance of his ears, his eyes were reduced to chinks, and diverging wrinkles appeared round them, extending upon his countenance like the rays in a rudimentary sketch of the rising sun.

His Christian name was Gabriel,and on working days he was a young man of sound judgment, easy motions, proper dress, and general good character. On Sundays he was a man of misty views, rather given to postponing, and hampered by his best clothes and umbrella: upon the whole, one who felt himself to occupy morally that vast middle space of Laodicean neutrality which lay between the Communion people of the parish and the drunken section,—that is, he went to church, but yawned privately by the time the congregation reached the Nicene creed, and thouglÖ