Weatherbury Farm

About the Book

In Far From the Madding Crowd, which is perhaps Thomas Hardy’s most popular novel, we leave Gabriel Oak and Bathsheba Everdene newly-married. Now, many years on, Bathsheba’s husband and three almost grown-up children have superseded the three diverse suitors of her youth. Bathsheba’s caprice and wilfulness has been replaced with the trials and tribulations of family life. All three children reject the careers chosen for them by their parents to become evermore cosmopolitan in their lives and outlook. As the children mature and make fewer demands on her time, Bathsheba becomes involved with Gabriel’s mission to improve the working and living conditions of agricultural labourers. She strives against prejudice to form a women’s movement to uphold and promote the rights of Union members’ wives. But as Industrialisation filters slowly into Hardy’s Victorian rural scenes, the Oak family find Wessex life is changing forever. Is this change for the better?

About the Author

Patricia Dolling-Mann was born in Northampton and started worked at the local newspaper office with a view to becoming a reporter. After a short time she realised her vocation was to nurse. Early retirement from the nursing profession has given her time to fulfil her lifelong ambition to write. After gaining an honours degree in English Literature with the Open University she has since devoted many hours to writing. A passion for the writings of Thomas Hardy prompted her and her husband to move to Dorset. Although now living in the South East of England, a library of Hardy-related works keeps her in touch with her beloved Wessex.