A towering achievement of English literature: This has to be my favorite of all Thomas Hardys many classic works. Far from the Madding Crowd was published in 1874 when the novelist was 34 years old. It is one of the earliest works of English literature I can think of which has a fully rounded, fully independent, fully human female protagonist. Bathsheba Everdene runs a farm, is only semi-aware of her own extraordinary beauty, and is pursued by three very different men throughout the course of the book. Far from the Madding Crowd may, in some sense, be the model for every cheapo drugstore romance novel ever written, but it is a classic for the very simple and very good reason that it transcends the genre it may have helped to start. Bathshebas trials, in love and elsewhere, are completely realized, with terrific detail.
