Far from the Madding Crowd: A Norton Critical Edition / Edition 1

by Thomas Hardy, Robert C. Schweik

Overview

This Norton Critical Edition is based on the 1912 Wessex edition, emended to correct errors which have crept into the text from the manuscript onward.

It also incorporates revisions that Hardy made in his "study copy" of the novel and in his marked printer’s copy and page proofs for the Harper and Brothers "sixpenny edition" of 1901, whenever these revisions could be confidently judged to represent Hardy’s final deliberate intent.

The resulting text includes revisions by Hardy which have never appeared before in a modern edition.

The novel is fully annotated and is accompanied by Hardy’s map of Wessex and a simplified map of the landscape of Far from the Madding Crowd.

"Textual Notes" include a list of emendations, examples of variant readings from the manuscript to the Wessex edition, and a discussion of the choice of copy text.

The textual history of the novel is traced in extracts from studies by Richard Little Purdy and Simon Gatrell.

"Backgrounds" includes substantial extracts from Hardy’s correspondence with Leslie Stephen and is followed by a selection of contemporary reviews.

Twentieth-century "Criticism" is represented by Howard Babb, Roy Morrell, Alan Friedman, J. Hillis Miller, Michael Millgate, Penelope Vigar, Peter J. Casagrande, Ian Gregor, and Albert C. Schweik.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780393954081
Publisher:	Norton, W. W. & Company, Inc.
Publication date:	01/17/1986
Series:	Norton Critical Editions Series
Edition description:	First Edition
Pages:	496
Sales rank:	916,765
Product dimensions:	5.20(w) x 8.40(h) x 1.10(d)

About the Author

Thomas Hardy (1840–1928), enduring author of the twentieth century, wrote the classics Jude the Obscure, Tess of the d'Urbervilles, Far from the Madding Crowd, The Return of the Native, The Mayor of Casterbridge, and many other works.

Robert C. Schweik was Distinguished Teaching Professor of English at the State University of New York, College at Fredonia, and had been Visiting Professor at the University of Wisconsin, the University of Trier, West Germany, and Stockholm University, Sweden, and a Fellow of the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Fulbright-Hays Program. He was co-author of Reference Sources in English and American Literature and Hart Crane: A Descriptive Bibliography, the editor of Wuthering Heights, and the author of articles on Hardy, Browning, and cultural history.

Date of Birth:

June 2, 1840

Date of Death:

January 11, 1928

Place of Birth:

Higher Brockhampon, Dorset, England

Place of Death:

Max Gate, Dorchester, England

Education:

Served as apprentice to architect James Hicks

Read an Excerpt

Chapter One

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 congegation reached the Nicene creed, and thought of what there would be for dinner when he meant to be listening to the sermon. Or, to state his character as it stood in the scale of public opinion, when his friends and critics were in tantrums, he was considered rather a bad man; when they were pleased, he was rather a good man; when they were neither, he was a man whose moral colour was a kind of pepperand-salt mixture.

Since he lived six times as many working-days as Sundays, Oak's appearance in his old clothes was most peculiarly his own--the mental picture formed by his neighbours in imagining him being always dressed in that way. He wore a low-crowned felt hat, spread out at the base by tight jamming upon the head for security in high winds, and a coat like Dr. Johnson's; his lowerextremities being encased in ordinary leather leggings and boots emphatically large, affording to each foot a roomy apartment so constructed that any wearer might stand in a river all day long and know nothing of damp--their maker being a conscientious man who endeavoured to compensate for any weakness in his cut by unstinted dimension and solidity.

Mr. Oak carried about him, by way of watch, what may be called a small silver clock; in other words, it was a watch as to shape and intention, and a small clock as to size. This instrument being several years older than Oak's grandfather, had the peculiarity of going either too fast or not at all. The smaller of its hands, too, occasionally slipped round on the pivot, and thus, though the minutes were told with precision, nobody could be quite certain of the hour they belonged to. The stopping peculiarity of his watch Oak remedied by thumps and shakes, and he escaped any evil consequences from the other two defects by constant comparisons with and observations of the sun and stars, and by pressing his face close to the glass of his neighbours' windows, till he could discern the hour marked by the green-faced timekeepers within. It may be mentioned that Oak's fob being difficult of access, by reason of its somewhat high situation in the waistband of his trousers (which also lay at a remote height under his waistcoat), the watch was as a necessity pulled out by throwing the body to one side, compressing the mouth and face to a mere mass of ruddy flesh on account of the exertion required, and drawing up the watch by its chain, like a bucket from a well.

But some thoughtful persons, who had seen him walking across one of his fields on a certain December morning--sunny and exceedingly mild--might have regarded Gabriel Oak in other aspects than these. In his face one might notice that many of the hues and curves of youth had tarried on to manhood: there even remained in his remoter crannies some relics of the boy. His height and breadth would have been sufficient to make his presence imposing, had they been exhibited with due consideration. But there is a way some men have, rural and urban alike, for which the mind is more responsible than flesh and sinew: it is a way of curtailing their dimensions by their manner of showing them. And from a quiet modesty that would have become a vestal which seemed continually to impress upon him that he had no great claim on the world's room, Oak walked unassumingly and with a faintly perceptible bend, yet distinct from a bowing of the shoulders. This may be said to be a defect in an individual if he depends for his valuation more upon his appearance than upon his capacity to wear well, which Oak did not.

He had just reached the time of life at which "young" is ceasing to be the prefix of "man" in speaking of one. He was at the brightest period of masculine growth, for his intellect and his emotions were clearly separated: he had passed the time during which the influence of youth indiscriminately mingles them in the character of impulse, and he had not yet arrived at the stage wherein they become united again, in the character of prejudice, by the influence of a wife and family. In short, he was twenty-eight, and a bachelor.

The field he was in this morning sloped to a ridge called Norcombe Hill. Through a spur of this hill ran the highway between Emminster and Chalk-Newton. Casually glancing over the hedge, Oak saw coming down the incline before him an ornamental spring waggon, painted yellow and gaily marked, drawn by two horses, a waggoner walking alongside bearing a whip perpendicularly. The waggon was laden with household goods and window plants, and on the apex of the whole sat a woman, young and attractive. Gabriel had not beheld the sight for more than half a minute, when the vehicle was brought to a standstill just beneath his eyes.

"The tailboard of the waggon is gone, Miss," said the waggoner.

Table of Contents

Preface
1. Description of Farmer Oak--An Incident
2. Night--The Flock--An Interior--Another Interior
3. A Girl on Horseback--Conversation
4. Gabriel's Resolve--The Visit--The Mistake
5. Departure of Bathsheba--A Pastoral Tragedy
6. The Fair--The Journey--The Fire
7. Recognition--A Timid Girl
8. The Malthouse--The Chat--News
9. The Homestead--A Visitor--Half-Confidences
10. Mistress and Men
11. Outside the Barracks--Snow--A Meeting
12. Farmers--A Rule--An Exception
13. Sortes Sanctorum--The Valentine
14. Effect of the Letter--Sunrise
15. A Morning Meeting--The Letter Again
16. All Saints' and All Souls'
17. In the Market-Place
18. Boldwood in Meditation--Regret
19. The Sheep-Washing--The Offer
20. Perplexity--Grinding the Shears--A Quarrel
21. Troubles in the Fold--A Message
22. The Great Barn and the Sheep-Shearers
23. Eventide--A Second Declaration
24. The Same Night--The Fir Plantation
25. The New Acquaintance Described
26. Scene on the Verge of the Hay-Mead
27. Hiving the Bees
28. The Hollow Amid the Ferns
29. Particulars of a Twilight Walk
30. Hot Cheeks and Tearful Eyes
31. Blame--Fury
32. Night--Horses Tramping
33. In the Sun--A Harbinger
34. Home Again--A Trickster
35. At an Upper Window
36. Wealth in Jeopardy--The Revel
37. The Storm--The Two Together
38. Rain--One Solitary Meets Another
39. Coming Home--A Cry
40. On Casterbridge Highway
41. Suspicion--Fanny Is Sent For
42. Joseph and His Burden--Buck's Head
43. Fanny's Revenge
44. Under a Tree--Reaction
45. Troy's Romanticism
46. The Gurgoyle: Its Doings
47. Adventures by the Shore
48. Doubts Arise--Doubts Linger
49. Oak's Advancement--A Great Hope
50. The Sheep Fair--Troy Touches His Wife's Hand
51. Bathsheba Talks with Her Outrider
52. Converging Courses
53. Concurritur--Horæ Momento
54. After the Shock
55. The March Following--"Bathsheba Boldwood"
56. Beauty in Loneliness--After All
57. A Foggy Night and Morning--Conclusion

What People are Saying About This

Virginia Woolf

Hardy's genius was unceratin in development, uneven in accomplishment, but, when the moment came, magnificent in achievement. The moment came, completely and fully, in Far From the Maddening Crowd. The subject was right; the poet and the countryman, the sensual man, the somber reflective man, the man of learning, all inlisted to produce a book which, however fashions may chop and change, must hold its place among the great English novels.

Reading Group Guide

1. According to the scholar Howard Babb, Hardy’s depiction of Wessex “impinges upon the consciousness of the reader in many ways . . . as mere setting, or a symbol, or as a being in its own right.” How does environment serve as an integral part of this novel?

2. The title of Far from the Madding Crowd, borrowed from Thomas Gray’s “Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard, ” celebrates the “cool, sequestered” lives of rural folks. Is the title ironic or appropriate?

3. The rustics who work the land, tend the sheep, and gather at Warren’s malt house have been likened to a Greek chorus. Can you support this analogy? What function do the rustics serve in the novel?

4. Time is a theme that weaves throughout the story. One example may be found in Chapter XVI, when Frank Troy stands rigidly in All Saints Church awaiting Fanny’s delayed arrival while a “grotesque clockwork” agonizingly marks each passing moment. Where else does Hardy employ the theme of time, and what purpose does it serve?

5. In Chapter IV, Bathsheba tells Gabriel, “I want somebody to tame me; I am too independent: and you would never be able to, I know.” How is Bathsheba “tamed” over the course of the novel, and who is responsible for her transformation?

6. How does the subordinate plot concerning Fanny Robin and Sergeant Troy serve as a contract to the main storyline?

7. What do Bathsheba Everdene and Fanny Robin have in common, and how do they differ? And what does Hardy’s portrayal of these two women reveal about Victorian moral standards?

8. In Gabriel Oak, Sergeant Troy, andFarmer Boldwood, Hardy has depicted three very different suitors in pursuit of Bathsheba Everdene. What distinguishes each of these characters, and what values does each of them represent?

9. Two particular episodes in Far from the Madding Crowd are often cited for their profound sensuality: Sergeant Troy’s seduction of Bathsheba through swordplay (Chapter XXVIII), and Gabriel’s sheep-shearing scene (Chapter XXII). What elements does Hardy employ to make these scenes so powerful?

10. At the end of the novel, Hardy describes the remarkable bond between Gabriel and Bathsheba: “Theirs was that substantial affection which arises . . . when the two who are thrown together begin first by knowing the rougher sides of each other’s character, and not the best till further on, the romance growing up in the interstices of a mass of hard, prosaic reality.” How does this relationship serve as a contrast to other examples of love and courtship throughout the novel? Consider Bathsheba and her three suitors, as well as Fanny Robin and Sergeant Troy.

Editorial Reviews

Hardy's rustic tale of Bathsheba Everdean and her three suitors comes to life through Thorne's expert narrative performance. Hardy's works often change pace and character quickly, a point which Thorne uses advantageously to wind us through this insightful novel. Thorne's interpretation of the text removes the distance which so often exists between Victorian literature and the modern reader. Thorne's performance skills transcend age and gender. The listener can envision each of the workers as they talk and sing in the pub, and Thorne's choice of voices for the four main characters gives added depth and presence. Textual interpretation, pacing and vocal characterization all come together to make Thorne's reading an excellent addition to any collection. J.S.G. ©AudioFile, Portland, Maine

Far from the Madding Crowd is the first of Thomas Hardy’s great novels, and the first to sound the tragic note for which his fiction is best remembered.”
-Margaret Drabble

From the Publisher