Formerly a prize-winning architectural student, Thomas Hardy (1840-1928) went on to become a prolific novelist and poet. The Mayor of Casterbridge is a powerful and sympathetic psychological study of a heroic but flawed man, set against the compellingly vivid backdrop of a close-knit Dorsetshire town.Hardy's novels Under the Greenwood Tree, Far from the Madding Crowd, The Return of the Native, Two on a Tower, Tess of the D'Urbervilles and Jude the Obscure are also published in the Penguin English Library.