Far from the Madding Crowd was Hardy’s breakthrough novel. He had published three books before it, which generally left critics unimpressed. As Dale Kramer notes in Critical Essays on Thomas Hardy: The Novels, reviewers of Hardy’s early works

were struck by the seemingly uncoordinated, coincidence-laden plots, and also by the rural settings where the sense of time was that of an idyll, by fantastic implausibilities mixed with poetic revelation of inner identities, and by the folklore of “Wessex” that resisted the importunities of modern existence.

Kramer later continues,

By the time of Far from the Madding Crowd even critical reviewers realized they were dealing with substantial works calling for judgment not in relation to popular writers of the day, but in relation to recognized masters.

Once Hardy’s literary importance was established, critics were still divided in their analysis of his work. He faced tremendous pressure from his Victorian audiences for his frank portrayal of sexuality, such as an unmarried woman like Fanny Robin being buried with her infant child, yet still loved by her neighbors and the man who had impregnated her. Hardy stopped writing fiction in 1895, after his novels had been attacked by critics who had called his fiction “vulgar” and “disagreeable.” Still, there had been many positive reviews from critics who recognized him as one of England’s finest writers. Hardy turned to writing poetry at age fifty-six. Because he was already a major literary figure, it was difficult to dismiss his poetry, though critics tended to pay less heed to it than to his fiction.

Throughout the twentieth century, Hardy’s work held its place at the forefront of world literature. Still, the contradictions in his work afford new readers ample room for formulating contrasting opinions. Richard C. Carpenter explains the wide range of feelings readers have had about Hardy’s novels this way:

If he is great, he is bound to be problematic, showing new sides to new generations, demanding that we wrestle with him as with an angel and take a few falls before we realize what sort of man he is.