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The Mayor of Casterbridge (1886) is a masterwork of emotional complexity, heartbreak, and redemption by celebrated English author Thomas Hardy.
Drunk and outraged, Michael Henchard auctions off his own wife and daughter for five guineas. The following morning, he searches for his family to no avail and, with the clarity of sobriety, swears off liquor for the next 21 years. In that time, he becomes a successful grain merchant and the titular Mayor of Casterbridge, all the while keeping the shameful truth of his family’s disappearance under strict secrecy. Through Henchard, Thomas Hardy paints with compassion a picture of a man whose virtues run as deep as his faults. Ultimately, the past refuses to stay buried, and with the return of his wife and child, Henchard must manage his public image as the mayor of a quiet and close knit Dorsetshire town with the weight of familial responsibility, honor, and truth.
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I. Disadvantageous Shabbiness 9
II. A Little Shining Object 21
III. The Highroad 25
IV. Ordinary Relations 30
V. Wi’ the Mayor in the Chair 37
VI. A Stranger 43
VII. This Homely Place 48
VIII. Thus They Parted 55
IX. The Feel of Imminent Autumn 62
X. In Return for his Unkindness 70
XI. The Ring at Casterbridge 74
XII. Henchard’s Garden 80
XIII. Altogether a Pleasant Spot 86
XIV. A Martinmas Summer 91
XV. Miss Newson’s Budding Beauty 100
XVI. He Was Courteous—too Courteous 107
XVII. Amid Such a Mixed Throng 114
XVIII. A Certain Risk of Intimacy 121
XIX. Bent on Resisting Pain 126
XX. Enigmas 134
XXI. A Maxim Glibly Repeated 144
XXII. My Dear Mr. Henchard 152
XXIII. A Silver-Topped Switch 163
XXIV. Her Malignant Star 171
XXV. The Next Phase of Supersession 180
XXVI. A Fine Spring Morning 185
XXVII. The Eve of Harvest 195
XXVIII. Nothing of Her Was to Be Seen 204
XXIX. Concatenations of Phenomena 209
XXX. Surprise at the Event 218
XXXI. Henchard’s Mad Freak 223
XXXII. The End of High Street 228
XXXIII. A Convivial Custom 236
XXXIV. At Such an Unseemly Time 244
XXXV. Like Spirits from the Grave 253
XXXVI. Any Prospect of an Opening 258
XXXVII. A Royal Personage 268
XXXVIII. The Shake of the Royal Hand 275
XXXIX. A Well-Intentioned but Clumsy
Contrivance 282
XL. Lost in Grave Reflection 290
XLI. Another Knock at the Door 296
XLII. In Somebody’s Hand 306
XLIII. On the Casterbridge Stage 314
XLIV. His Solitary Way Eastward 323
XLV. The Novelty of Her Situation 333