This lyrical, meditative, and often brillantly comic novel is one of Hardy’s greatest achievements, and one of the most original historical novels ever written. The Napoleonic Wars shape and colour a love-story set in a Wessex village near the coast, astir with the fears, public bustle and military preparations of the time. Anne and her three wooers, sailor, soldier and braggart militia-man, are ghosts from the day before yesterday, their history filtered down through local memory and record, but although Hardy makes us feel the melancholy of the past he tells his story vividly, tolerantly and comically.
