The Mayor of Casterbridge

One of the group generally regarded as Hardy's finest novels (the others are Far from the Madding Crowd, The Woodlanders, Return of the Native, Tess of the D'Urbervilles, Jude the Obscure - and I would add Under the Greenwood Tree, just because I like it so much).  Together with Life's Little Ironies and Wessex Tales, Hardy grouped the above novels as his "Novels of Character and Environment". 

Michael Henchard, in a drunken state, sells his wife and daughter to a sailor.  In remorse, he swears he will not drink for twenty-one years.  Many years later, Mrs Henchard - now going under a new name as the sailor's presumed widow - and her daughter find him greatly raised in the world - the Mayor of the title.  But the strong character that has made his fortune also brings his downfall.  The young Donald Farfrae wins the daughter's heart, but marries someone with more connections to Henchard than anyone at first realises.  When Farfrae's loyalty to Henchard is broken by the older man's stubbornness and pride, Henchard discovers that he is out of depth as a backward rustic in a modern world. 

As often in Hardy's work, an overarching theme is the way that the old Wessex is changing.  The old business ways, as well as agricultural methods, are being overturned in the march of progress.  The most important thing to the success of the novel is the sheer power - for good and evil - of the central character.  The tragedy comes out of the knowledge that he need not have been like that; and yet, being in a Wessex novel, he did.