The Mayor of Casterbridge | Critical Overview

On January 2, 1886, the day on which the first installment of The Mayor of Casterbridge was published, Hardy wrote in his diary, “I fear it will not be so good as I meant.” Although Hardy’s fiction up to this point had received mixed reviews, critics generally disagreed with the author about the quality of this book and gave it high marks. Hardy’s autobiography says of the novel, “others thought better of it than he did himself” and mentions that the author Robert Louis...

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