Far from the Madding Crowd was the first of Hardy's Wessex novels to draw serious critical attention. While similarities exist throughout all of his novels, readers who like Bathsheba Everdene will probably appreciate Eustacia Vye, the heroine of Hardy's next novel The Return of the Native (1878).

When Far from the Madding Crowd was first published, it was rumored to be the work of George Eliot (pseudonym for Mary Ann Evans). Eliot's novel Middlemarch, first published in 1872, is considered by many to be her masterpiece.

Emphasis is often placed on the connection between Hardy's characters and the setting of his novels. One scholarly work that examines the subject closely is Noorul Hasan's Thomas Hardy: The Sociological Imagination (1982). Hasan's work has enough depth to dedicate an entire chapter to Far from the Madding Crowd and point out nuances that a modern reader...