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 Blue Eyes. Both historically and intrinsically, this novel is one of the most important of the series. It was the first book that Hardy acknowledged as his own from the start, and for its plot, melodramatic thrills, characterization, nature-machinery, acid irony and occasional gentleness and humor, may fairly be called the first really characteristic Hardy-novel. Its reception was not enthusiastic.

Ample atonement for all this public and critical apathy was accorded, however, in the greeting which was bestowed upon Far from the Madding Crowd, which began to run anonymously in the Cornhill Magazine in 1873, and which was published in two volumes by Smith, Elder & Co. in 1874. There was much speculation as to its authorship. Strangely enough, it was thought by many to be a late work of George Eliot, who had long since passed the Silas Marner and Mill on the Floss stage of her career. The Wessex folk in the tale drew much unfavorable comment, however; one reviewer characterizing the inimitable Joseph Poorgrass as a "preeminent bore." Edmund Gosse remembers that the dialect of the rustics was also called "odd scraps of a kind of rural euphuism . . . a queer mixture, very dreary and depressing."

In spite of these and similar blunders on the part of readers, the book achieved an instant and considerable vogue. Encouraged by this first material success, Hardy and Miss Gifford decided to risk matrimony. They were quietly married, and immediately established themselves in Dorset, first at Stourminster-Newton, the "Stourcastle" of the novels. Then they removed to London, where they lived, off and on, for several years, and later to