Recommendations
Books Like Far from the Madding Crowd
Best books to read after Far from the Madding Crowd by Thomas Hardy
Readers who love Far from the Madding Crowd by Thomas Hardy are drawn to its combination of the first fully realized Wessex pastoral, the independent and self-willed Bathsheba Everdene and her three suitors, and the investigation of what happens when the modern world (in the form of Sergeant Troy) intrudes into the pastoral community. They want works that deal with the English rural world, the Victorian pastoral romance, the woman who must choose between different forms of love, and the Hardy canon that begins here.
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The Return of the Native
by Thomas Hardy
The companion — Eustacia Vye and Clym Yeobright on Egdon Heath. The companion as the more complex and darker investigation of the same Dorset world: where Far from the Madding Crowd allows a pastoral resolution, The Return of the Native is the tragic version — the woman who wants more than the rural world can give, and is destroyed by the wanting
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Tess of the D'Urbervilles
by Thomas Hardy
Hardy's companion — Tess's tragedy. The companion as the fullest and darkest statement of the same theme: the beautiful country girl destroyed by the intrusion of the modern world into the pastoral world in which she could have been happy. If Far from the Madding Crowd is Hardy's optimistic pastoral, Tess is his tragic one
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The Mayor of Casterbridge
by Thomas Hardy
The companion — Michael Henchard's self-destruction. The companion as the tragic investigation of the same Dorset world organized around a man's willful self-destruction: where Bathsheba Everdene learns to temper her willfulness through experience, Michael Henchard's willfulness destroys him completely
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Adam Bede
by George Eliot
Eliot's companion pastoral — Adam, Hetty, and Dinah in the English Midlands. The companion as the Victorian predecessor of the same form: both novels are set in specifically realized English agricultural worlds and both are organized around a beautiful young woman and the men who love her
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Middlemarch
by George Eliot
Eliot's companion masterpiece — the investigation of intelligent self-willed women in provincial England. The companion as the investigation of the same central question (what becomes of an intelligent, self-willed woman who wants more than her provincial world offers?) organized through a Midlands town rather than an agricultural Dorset
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Jude the Obscure
by Thomas Hardy
Hardy's companion final novel — Jude Fawley and Sue Bridehead. The companion as the most radical and modern statement of the same investigation: Jude and Sue are the Hardy characters who most fully understand the social forces that destroy them, and their world is the dark endpoint of the pastoral world that Far from the Madding Crowd investigates optimistically
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The Woodlanders
by Thomas Hardy
Hardy's companion — Giles Winterborne and Grace Melbury in the Dorset woods. The companion as the quieter and more melancholy investigation of the same world: where Far from the Madding Crowd allows a pastoral resolution, The Woodlanders does not, and Giles Winterborne's self-sacrificing death is the tragic version of Gabriel Oak's patient love
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The Mill on the Floss
by George Eliot
Eliot's companion — Maggie Tulliver's tragic search for a life the world cannot give her. The companion as the autobiographical and more tragic investigation of the same English rural world: both novels are organized around a passionate young woman navigating the social constraints of Victorian provincial England
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