Hardy's Far from the Madding Crowd was published serially in 1874 and is ranked as a Victorian classic. It is the story of a woman farmer and her three suitors. Author Virginia Woolf commented that this book "must hold its place among the great English novels." It has the distinction of being Hardy's only novel to offer readers a happy ending.

Hardy's Tess of the D'Urbervilles was published in 1891 and has always been one of his most popular novels. It tells the tragic story of Tess, a young farm worker on the estate of the wealthy D'Urbervilles. Working to support her drunken father and the rest of her family, she is raped and impregnated by a son of her employer. When her baby dies, she moves away and is courted by a hardworking young man. But tragedy continues to follow her...