The Hand of Ethelberta. A Comedy in Chapters

A butler's daughter has published a book of verse, married a rich man's son, been widowed at twenty-one, and now goes about London society as a lady while her father waits at table and her sisters are in service - and four men want to marry her. Hardy called it a comedy and his readers, who wanted another Far from the Madding Crowd, did not forgive him; it is his one novel about class as a performance, and the performance is brilliant.