FREE Far from the Madding Crowd

[NedC]

The latest mobi/epub from EbookClassics.org.uk is Thomas Hardy's "Far from the Madding Crowd".

New releases on this website seem a bit erratic, but you can sign up to a mailing list to be alerted when something comes out. Many of the titles can be found on Mobileread, but these have been well proofread, so if scanning errers and and greengrocer's' apos'trophe's get up your nose, this is the place to go.

From the blurb:

THOMAS HARDY (1840-1928) published "Far from the Madding Crowd" in 1874. It was his fourth novel and his first major success, encouraging him to give up work as an architect and focus entirely on his writing. It was also the first of his books to use the name “Wessex” to describe the west of England landscapes which nourished his stories.

The name evokes an imagined time as well as an imagined geography. Hardy's Casterbridge is Victorian, but it seems to predate railways and mowing and reaping machines, with none of the rural unrest which swept the country during the first part of the 19th century. No rick burning in Weatherbury, though only about half a mile away in the historical Dorset the Tolpuddle Martyrs swore their oath and were sentenced to seven years’ transportation.