The greatest tragic writer among English novelists.Virginia Woolf Far from the Madding Crowd is the first of Thomas Hardys great novels and the first to sound the tragic note for which his fiction is best remembered.Margaret Drabble Far from the Madding Crowd the fourth novel written by Thomas Hardy is a pensive yet pastoral novel that initially appeared in serial form in the late 1800s. It has since become one of the most popular books of English literature with its rich rhythms of rural life beautiful and independent heroine and romantic intrigue. In Wessex the novels apocryphal region of rural southwest England the independent and spirited Bathsheba Everdene has a chance encounter with a virtuous young shepherd named Gabriel Oak He is taken by her beauty and proposes marriage and she refuses.