An over-reliance on literary short cuts to meet the demands of serialisation had produced a certain scrappiness, attracting poor reviews. Of the five novels he had written since his marriage, none had matched the success of Far from the Madding Crowd (1874). Hardy had lost confidence in his work, deeming his last three novels lightweight. He was deeply lonely and as he took leave of his youth and the illusions of love, he embraced a fatalistic melancholy. Emma had just turned forty-five and their childlessness would become a source of lifelong regret for each of them. He was also deeply disillusioned by the widening gulf of unhappiness between him and his wife Emma after their earlier happy years (there is a story about their marriage here).

Hardy’s biographer Gittings observes that after his death ‘Hardy never portrayed a man who was not, in some way, maimed by fate.’ It was an appalling loss, for Moule had been at the centre of Hardy’s artistic development and was his only true confidante. His closest friend Horace Moule, a brilliant and sensitive man like himself, had committed suicide. When Thomas Hardy wrote The Mayor of Casterbridge in 1884 he was forty-four and the themes that were to shape the rest of his life and work had stirred. Yet the crowd was denser now than during the morning hours, the frivolous contingent of visitors, including journeymen out for a holiday, a stray soldier or two come on furlough, village shopkeepers, and the like, having latterly flocked in persons whose activities found a congenial field among the peep-shows, toy-stands, waxworks, inspired monsters, disinterested medical men who travelled for the public good, thimble-riggers,nick-nack vendors, and readers of Fate.

At present, as their informant had observed, but little real business remained on hand, the chief being the sale by auction of a few inferior animals, that could not otherwise be disposed of, and had been absolutely refused by the better class of traders, who came and went early. The trusser and his family proceeded on their way, and soon entered the Fair-field, which showed standing-places and pens where many hundreds of horses and sheep had been exhibited and sold in the forenoon, but were now in great part taken away. I've been working within sound o't all day, but I didn't go up - not I. Though what you hear now is little more than the clatter and scurry of getting away the money o' children and fools, for the real business is done earlier than this. Noticing a crowd, Henchard asks him what is going on? Along the way they meet a labourer who tells Henchard neither work nor shelter is to be found there. Michael Henchard, a hard drinking, unemployed hay trusser, is walking towards a village with his wife Susan and their baby daughter.

Thomas hardy novel return of the