# The Mayor of Casterbridge

Canonical: https://www.bookquiver.com/thomas-hardy/the-mayor-of-casterbridge/9780141439785

![The Mayor of Casterbridge](https://quivercdn.com/covers/penguin-classics/thomas-hardy/the-mayor-of-casterbridge_978-01-4143-978-5.jpg?v=2026-04-23%2018%3A51%3A12)

- Book: [The Mayor of Casterbridge](https://www.bookquiver.com/thomas-hardy/the-mayor-of-casterbridge) ([The Mayor of Casterbridge.md](https://www.bookquiver.com/thomas-hardy/the-mayor-of-casterbridge.md))
- Authors: [Thomas Hardy](https://www.bookquiver.com/thomas-hardy)
- Publisher: penguin_classics
- ISBN: 978-01-4143-978-5
- Pages: 448
- Published: 2003-03-27
- Language: en_GB
- Binding: Softcover

## Description

In a fit of drunken anger, Michael Henchard sells his wife and baby daughter for five guineas at a country fair. Over the course of the following years, he manages to establish himself as a respected and prosperous pillar of the community of Casterbridge, but behind his success there always lurk the shameful secret of his past and a personality prone to self-destructive pride and temper. Subtitled 'A Story of a Man of Character', Hardy's powerful and sympathetic study of the heroic but deeply flawed Henchard is also an intensely dramatic work, tragically played out against the vivid backdrop of a close-knit Dorsetshire town.