Äåòàëüíàÿ èíôîðìàöèÿ îá èçäàíèè

None of the great Victorian novels is more vivid and readable than The Mayor of Casterbridge. Set in the heart of Hardy s Wessex, the partly real, partly dream country he founded on his native Dorset, it charts the rise and self-induced downfall of asingle man of character. The fast-moving and ingeniously contrived narrative is Shakespearian in its tragic force, and features some of the author s most striking episodes and brilliant passages of description. In a fit of drunken anger, Michael Henchard sells his wife and baby daughter for five guineas at a country fair. Over the course of the following years, he manages to establish himself as a respected and prosperous pillar of the community of Casterbridge, but behind his success there always lurk the shameful secret of his past and a personality prone to self-destructive pride and temper. Subtitled A Story of a Man of Character, Hardy s powerful and sympathetic study of the heroic but deeply flawed Henchard is also an intensely dramatic work, tragically played out against the vivid backdrop of a close-knit Dorsetshire town.