The Mayor of Casterbridge (English Library) - Tapa blanda

One of the Wessex tales, this tells the story of the brooding, and sometimes brutal Michael Henchard and the women with whom he searches for happiness in the harsh world of 19th-century rural England.

Thomas Hardy was born in Dorset in 1840 and became an apprentice architect at the age of sixteen. He spent his twenties in London, where he wrote his first poems. In 1867 Hardy returned to his native Dorset, whose rugged landscape was a great source of inspiration for his writing. Between 1871 and 1897 he wrote fourteen novels, including Tess of the D'Urbervilles and Jude the Obscure. This final work was received savagely; thereafter Hardy turned away from novels and spent the last thirty year of his life focusing on poetry. He died in 1928.