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More than 5000 entries on the history, culture and life of Britain (published in 1993 by Macmillan, now out of print)
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Far from the Madding Crowd
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(1874) Novel by Thomas *Hardy in which the patient love of Gabriel Oak for Bathsheba Everdene, the wayward owner of the farm on which he works, triumphs at last over the posturings of her other admirers. Gabriel proposes at the start of the book and is only accepted at the end. Meanwhile Bathsheba has married the bombastic Sergeant Troy; he is shot by her next frenetic suitor, Farmer Boldwood, who in turn is imprisoned as criminally insane. The title is from *Gray's Elegy, where the poet praises those country people who keep the tenor of their own way amid the ignoble strife of the crowd.
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