Despite the violent ends of several of its major characters, Far from the Madding Crowd is the sunniest and least brooding of Hardy's great novels.
The strong-minded Bathsheba Everdene and the devoted shepherd, obsessed farmer, and dashing soldier who vie for her favor move through a beautifully realized late nineteenth-century agrarian landscape, still almost untouched by the industrial revolution and the encroachment of modern life.
