Far from the madding crowd, by Thomas Hardy ... with an etching by H. Macbeth-Raeburn and a map of Wessex

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.