Far from the Madding Crowd was the first of Hardy's novels to apply the name of Wessex to the landscape of south west England, and the first to gain him widespread popularity as a novelist.

When the beautiful and spirited Bathsheba Everdene inherits her own farm, she attracts three very different suitors: the seemingly commonplace, man-of-the-soil Gabriel Oak, the dashing young soldier, Francis Troy, and the respectable, middle-aged Farmer Boldwood.

Her choice, and the tragedy it provokes, lie at the centre of Hardy's ambivalent story.

This edition presents a new text, restoring several manuscript passages never before published with the novel, and many of the 1901 revisions missing from nearly all modern versions.