These five novels span 1874 to 1895, the years in which Hardy turned Wessex from a setting into a system. The order below is publication order, which is also the order in which the books get bleaker.
Far from the Madding Crowd made his name and is the most forgiving of the five. By Tess of the d’Urbervilles and Jude the Obscure he had stopped writing books that a Victorian circulating library would stock, and the reception of Jude ended his career as a novelist.
The novels are only loosely connected, by place and by recurring minor characters rather than by plot. You can start anywhere, but reading in order lets you watch the rural comedy give way to something much harder.
Where to start
Far from the Madding Crowd — his first major Wessex novel and the one with the most daylight in it. If you already know you like the tragic Hardy, go straight to Tess of the d’Urbervilles.
Thomas Hardy in publication order
Numbered by first publication. Word counts and reading times are for the text on this site.
| # | Year | Title | Words | Reading time | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 1874 | Far from the Madding Crowd | 136,000 | 7.6 h | 1874; the novel that made his name. |
| 2 | 1878 | The Return of the Native | 143,000 | 7.9 h | 1878. |
| 3 | 1886 | The Mayor of Casterbridge | 119,000 | 6.6 h | 1886; the shortest here. |
| 4 | 1891 | Tess of the d’Urbervilles | 149,000 | 8.3 h | 1891. |
| 5 | 1895 | Jude the Obscure | 145,000 | 8.1 h | 1895; his last novel. |
How to read Thomas Hardy
- Publication order. Far from the Madding Crowd, The Return of the Native, The Mayor of Casterbridge, Tess of the d’Urbervilles, Jude the Obscure, 1874 to 1895.
- The last two. Tess and Jude, published in 1891 and 1895, are the pair that made his reputation and ended his novel-writing. Read them together and last.
- Shortest first. The Mayor of Casterbridge, at about 119,000 words, is the shortest of the five, and the one with the tightest plot.
Jude the Obscure was his last novel; after the attacks on it he went back to poetry for the rest of his life. That is worth knowing before you read it, because it is a book written by someone who had stopped caring what the reviewers thought.
Every title above has a page here with chapter summaries, the word count, reading time, and free EPUB, AZW3 and KEPUB files. Thomas Hardy’s shelf · Victorian novels · Classic fiction — or go back to Thomas Hardy for the full shelf.