SOURCE: “Mr. Hardy's Novels.” British Quarterly Review 73 (April 1881): 174-83.

In the following excerpt from an early review of Hardy's novels, the critic compares Hardy to some of his contemporaries and points out the salient features of his fiction. However, the reviewer states that Far from the Madding Crowd is not one of Hardy's best works.

When George Eliot died it was not unnatural that men should at once ask themselves if she who had been confessedly the greatest living English novelist had left any successor in the true province of literature. The question, floating in so many minds, was answered promptly and decidedly by one journal, not without influence on opinion, which claimed the falling mantle for Mr. Thomas Hardy. It was a surprise to many who read the words that such a claim should have been made; the English public, greedy for amusement, careless about good, finished...