Critical appraisals

Abstract

The Mayor of Casterbridge was written during 1884 and finished on 17 April, 1885. It was serialised weekly in The Graphic from January to May 886 and first published in book form on 10 May 1886. By this time, of course, Hardy was an established author and could expect reviews in the leading periodicals and literary magazines of the day. It was not a book on which there was any general agreement, reviewers dividing into distinct camps, with a general reaction of slight disappointment. The general public were tardy in buying; about 600 copies from the first edition were sold, 158 were remaindered. Six years after publication an American academic reviewer found it ‘the least attractive of all Hardy’s books’ which, he adds, the booksellers found to be unpopular