FAR FROM THE MADDING CROWD
by Thomas Hardy
Preface
In reprinting this story for a new edition I am reminded
that it was in the chapters of "Far from the Madding Crowd"
as they appeared month by month in a popular magazine, that
I first ventured to adopt the word "Wessex" from the pages
of early English history, and give it a fictitious
significance as the existing name of the district once
included in that extinct kingdom. The series of novels I
projected being mainly of the kind called local, they seemed
to require a territorial definition of some sort to lend
unity to their scene. Finding that the area of a single
country did not afford a canvas large enough for this
purpose, and that there were objections to an invented name,
I disinterred the old one. The press and the public were
kind enough to welcome the fanciful plan, and willingly
joined me in the anachronism of imagining a Wessex
population living under Queen Victoria; -- a modern Wessex
of railways, the penny post, mowing and reaping machines,
union workhouses, lucifer matches, labourers who could read
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