Mayor of Casterbridge Part Two: A skimmity ride beyond the city walls

The Curiously Specific Book Club

In part two of our adventure with The Mayor of Casterbridge by Thomas Hardy we walk out of Dorchester over two bridges and down to a weir, where Michael Henchard can be found considering ending it all and seeing what appears to be a body floating down the Frome. Behind him and up on a hill we can imagine his creator looking down on to the marshy fields beyond Dorchester, because this is where Hardy built his home, called Max Gate, where he wrote the Mayor of Casterbridge and where, some forty years later, he died. We tell the extraordinary story of Hardy’s funerals (yes, funerals), and consider whether or not he is Curiously Specific about dates and locations.

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