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In the village of Mellstock, the old church musicians, a band of fiddlers and singers led by the Dewy family, play carols from house to house on Christmas…
In the village of Mellstock, the old church musicians, a band of fiddlers and singers led by the Dewy family, play carols from house to house on Christmas Eve, as they have for generations. But the new vicar wants to replace them with a harmonium, played by the pretty new schoolmistress, Fancy Day. Young Dick Dewy falls in love with Fancy, and so do a wealthy farmer and the vicar himself, while the choir fights its losing battle against change.
Context and significance
Published in 1872, this was Thomas Hardy's first success and is the gentlest and most cheerful of his novels, a comic picture of village life inspired by his own family in Dorset, where his father and grandfather played in the church band. Read next Far from the Madding Crowd, and see his life.
About the author
Thomas Hardy (1840–1928) was the son of a stonemason in a Dorset hamlet and trained as an architect, restoring country churches. His novels, set in the imaginary region of Wessex, began with modest success, and Far from the Madding Crowd (1874) allowed him to write full time.
After the storm of criticism over Jude the Obscure in 1895 he gave up novels for poetry and wrote some of the best English poems of the twentieth century, many of them about his first wife Emma after her death. His ashes were buried in Westminster Abbey and his heart in his home parish.