Regarded by many as Hardy's prose masterpiece, Far From the Madding Crowd is the tragi-comic story of a woman and three men. Bathsheba Everdene is courted by the brilliant Troy, the obsessive Boldwood and the faithful Gabriel Oak. One is successful in his suit, but only after violence and murder have eliminated the other two. The story is set in the haunting Wessex landscape Hardy had begun to make his own by the time he published the novel in 1874.