The Mayor Of Casterbridge (Unabridged)

Irritated and drunken, an itinerant farm-worker sells his wife and child to a stranger. Thus begins The Mayor of Casterbridge, set in rural and small-town England in the mid-1800s. In the original subtitle, Hardy called this the story of "a man of character, " and the central character, Michael Henchard, is one of English fiction's greatest creations. Henchard is deeply developed as a realistic character, but also larger-than-life in the manner of a Greek or Shakespearean tragic hero - huge in his determination and huge in his failings.
The novel deals with the struggles between individual will, the hold of the past, and the relentless control of circumstances in a changing society.