The Mayor of Casterbridge

Thomas Hardy · 1840–1928 · England

Why it matters

Michael Henchard sells his wife at a country fair while drunk, then spends the rest of his life as a self-made mayor undone by that one irreversible act. Hardy's starkest character study: a tragedy built almost entirely from one man's temperament.

At a glance

A tightly focused single-protagonist tragedy, more compact than Hardy's other major novels.