1886The Mayor of Casterbridge
Thomas Hardy
Hardy's Casterbridge is Dorchester barely disguised: the Roman amphitheatre at Maumbury Rings where Henchard keeps his furtive meetings, the King's Arms on the High Street where the mayor holds his banquet, the corn-market where a hay-trusser who once sold his wife at a country fair has risen to preside, the Ten Hatches weir on the Frome where he goes to drown. Hardy mapped his home town so exactly he later published the keys. Only Weydon-Priors, drawn from Weyhill in Hampshire, sits well outside the town.
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