Far from the Madding Crowd

Graced with the splendid illustrations executed by Helen Paterson for the first edition of the novel, this special Collector's Edition of Far from the Madding Crowd also features handwritten letters and drawings by Hardy, as well as rare and intimate portraits of the author and his first wife, Emma. Here, too, readers are granted a fascinating and touching glimpse of how two great imaginative writers interact with one another: This edition reproduces the handwritten pages from Virginia Woolf's diary in which she recounts her now-famous visit with the very aged Thomas Hardy at his home, Max Gate, in 1926.

Margaret Drabble edited The Oxford Companion to English Literature and The Genius of Thomas Hardy. Her novels include The Waterfall and The Gates of Ivory, and, most recently, The Witch of Exmoor and The Peppered Moth. She lives in England.