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The Mayor of Casterbridge

By Thomas Hardy & Mint Editions
The Mayor of Casterbridge by Thomas Hardy & Mint Editions digital book - Fable

Publisher Description

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.

Since our inception in 2020, Mint Editions has kept sustainability and innovation at the forefront of our mission. Each and every Mint Edition title gets a fresh, professionally typeset manuscript and a dazzling new cover, all while maintaining the integrity of the original book.

With thousands of titles in our collection, we aim to spotlight diverse public domain works to help them find modern audiences. Mint Editions celebrates a breadth of literary works, curated from both canonical and overlooked classics from writers around the globe.

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About Thomas Hardy

Thomas Hardy (1840-1938) was an English poet and novelist who initially trained and showed promise as an architect before finding success as a writer. His style and form followed in the Victorian realist tradition of George Eliot and the Romanticism of William Wordsworth. Hardy’s work displays a concern that the conventions of Victorian society were damaging to many and places an emphasis on empathy toward those it made suffer. His richly drawn characters engage in a timeless striving for happiness and a chance to rise above a world that offers implacable barriers to their hopes. Although he regarded himself primarily as a poet, he first gained notoriety as the author of novels like Far from the Madding Crowd (1874), The Mayor of Casterbridge (1886), Tess of the d’Ubervilles (1891), and Jude the Obscure (1895). His poetry was acclaimed by some younger poets during his lifetime and lauded posthumously by greats like Ezra Pound and Philip Larkin. 

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