The Mayor of Casterbridge

First published in 1886, this novel opens with Michael Henchard, a hay-trusser, selling his wife Susan and their child to a sailor in a fit of drunken remorse at a country fair. Years later Henchard has become a wealthy corn merchant and mayor of Casterbridge when Susan returns with Elizabeth-Jane. The arrival of the Scots manager Donald Farfrae, and the reappearance of a woman from Henchard's past, undo his credit and his household. The book is a Wessex tragedy of temper and reputation, not a civic history of Dorchester.

Bound in dark brown cloth decorated in green with a corn dolly motif, dark brown leather spine-label. Brown map endleaves. Brown slipcase. Later impressions had spine-label blocked rather than of leather and a pale brown slipcase.