
Hardy: The Mayor of Casterbridge
Failed to add items
Add to Cart failed.
Add to Wish List failed.
Remove from wishlist failed.
Adding to library failed
Follow podcast failed
Unfollow podcast failed

Get 2 free audiobooks during trial.
Buy for $25.69
No default payment method selected.
We are sorry. We are not allowed to sell this product with the selected payment method
-
Narrated by:
-
Anton Lesser
-
By:
-
Thomas Hardy
About this listen
Michael Henchard, drunk at a country fair, sells his wife and baby daughter for five guineas. The following day, in despair and remorse, he forswears alcohol and sets out to redeem himself. In time, he becomes a respected merchant and eventually the mayor of the town. But Fate is not to be so easily appeased, and Henchard finds his past actions resonate through and destroy his plans for the future.
One of the greatest novels in the English language, The Mayor of Casterbridge sees Thomas Hardy at his best, bringing landscape and richly imagined characters to life, and setting the hope of love against the forces of Providence.
Download the accompanying reference guide.Public Domain (P)2010 Naxos AudiobookListeners also enjoyed...
-
Tess of the d'Urbervilles (AmazonClassics Edition)
- By: Thomas Hardy
- Narrated by: Esther Wane
- Length: 15 hrs and 49 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
When peddler John Durbeyfield learns that he may be a descendant of a noble family, he sends his oldest child, Tess, to “claim kin.” Blindly ushered into harm’s way, the strong-willed yet untinctured peasant girl is not prepared for the blighted course her life will take. Nor for those whose destructive desires will determine her fate, and force Tess to make only the most desperate of choices. From her tragic loss of innocence through betrayal and revenge, Tess’s struggle for survival challenged the era’s mores and the cruel indifference shown women in Victorian society.
-
-
Fantastic narration, compassion inducing tale
- By Susan G. on 09-27-20
By: Thomas Hardy
-
Far from the Madding Crowd
- By: Thomas Hardy
- Narrated by: John Lee
- Length: 13 hrs and 47 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Gabriel Oak is only one of three suitors for the hand of the beautiful and spirited Bathsheba Everdene. He must compete with the dashing young soldier Sergeant Troy and the respectable, middle-aged Farmer Boldwood. And while their fates depend upon the choice Bathsheba makes, she discovers the terrible consequences of an inconstant heart.
-
-
Another Classic!
- By 🌸DARA on 06-07-13
By: Thomas Hardy
-
Jude the Obscure
- By: Thomas Hardy
- Narrated by: Neville Jason
- Length: 17 hrs and 23 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Sexually innocent Jude Fawley is trapped into marriage by seductive Arabella Donn, but their union is an unhappy one and Arabella leaves him. Jude's welcome freedom allows him to pursue his obsession with his pretty cousin Sue Bridehead, a brilliant, charismatic free-thinker who would be his ideal soul-mate if not for her aversion to physical love. When Jude and Sue decide to lead their lives outside marriage they bring down on themselves all the force of a repressive society.
-
-
Left reeling
- By Tad Davis on 03-03-14
By: Thomas Hardy
-
The Woodlanders
- By: Thomas Hardy
- Narrated by: Stephen Thorne
- Length: 14 hrs and 18 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The Woodlanders is vintage Hardy. The story revolves around the young woman Grace Melbury, who returns to the leafy world of Little Hintock and soon finds herself at the center of a number of tragic events. In penetrating, incisive, and beautiful prose, Hardy tells a moving tale of unrequited love as fate and the constraints of society thwart the happiness of our heroine. The leafy world of Blackmoor Vale and the hamlet of Little Hintock are all lovingly described by Hardy, who named The Woodlanders as the favorite of all his novels.
-
-
A Masterpiece of writing and narration!
- By Kathi on 05-17-14
By: Thomas Hardy
-
Desperate Remedies
- By: Thomas Hardy
- Narrated by: Melody Grove
- Length: 15 hrs and 39 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Cytherea has taken a position as lady's maid to the eccentric Miss Aldclyffe. On discovering that the man she loves is already engaged to his cousin, Cytherea comes under the influence of Miss Aldclyffe's fascinating, manipulative steward Manston. Desperate Remedies contains sensational ingredients of blackmail, murder and romance, but with its insight into psychology and sexuality it already bears the unmistakable imprint of Hardy’s future genius.
-
-
Romance with substance
- By Joanna Sakievich on 12-28-24
By: Thomas Hardy
-
A Pair of Blue Eyes
- By: Thomas Hardy
- Narrated by: Anna Bentinck
- Length: 16 hrs
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Hardy's third novel, A Pair of Blue Eyes, follows the story of Elfride Swancourt. The daughter of the rector of Endelstow, a sparse, sea-swept parish in Cornwall, Elfride is caught between two suitors of very different backgrounds: Stephen Smith, a young architect restoring the old parish church; and the respectable, older man of London society, Henry Knight. The blue-eyed and high-spirited protagonist must untangle the conflicting messages of her heart and her mind.
-
-
Depressing story & unbelievable central character
- By Molly R. on 08-14-17
By: Thomas Hardy
-
Tess of the d'Urbervilles (AmazonClassics Edition)
- By: Thomas Hardy
- Narrated by: Esther Wane
- Length: 15 hrs and 49 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
When peddler John Durbeyfield learns that he may be a descendant of a noble family, he sends his oldest child, Tess, to “claim kin.” Blindly ushered into harm’s way, the strong-willed yet untinctured peasant girl is not prepared for the blighted course her life will take. Nor for those whose destructive desires will determine her fate, and force Tess to make only the most desperate of choices. From her tragic loss of innocence through betrayal and revenge, Tess’s struggle for survival challenged the era’s mores and the cruel indifference shown women in Victorian society.
-
-
Fantastic narration, compassion inducing tale
- By Susan G. on 09-27-20
By: Thomas Hardy
-
Far from the Madding Crowd
- By: Thomas Hardy
- Narrated by: John Lee
- Length: 13 hrs and 47 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Gabriel Oak is only one of three suitors for the hand of the beautiful and spirited Bathsheba Everdene. He must compete with the dashing young soldier Sergeant Troy and the respectable, middle-aged Farmer Boldwood. And while their fates depend upon the choice Bathsheba makes, she discovers the terrible consequences of an inconstant heart.
-
-
Another Classic!
- By 🌸DARA on 06-07-13
By: Thomas Hardy
-
Jude the Obscure
- By: Thomas Hardy
- Narrated by: Neville Jason
- Length: 17 hrs and 23 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Sexually innocent Jude Fawley is trapped into marriage by seductive Arabella Donn, but their union is an unhappy one and Arabella leaves him. Jude's welcome freedom allows him to pursue his obsession with his pretty cousin Sue Bridehead, a brilliant, charismatic free-thinker who would be his ideal soul-mate if not for her aversion to physical love. When Jude and Sue decide to lead their lives outside marriage they bring down on themselves all the force of a repressive society.
-
-
Left reeling
- By Tad Davis on 03-03-14
By: Thomas Hardy
-
The Woodlanders
- By: Thomas Hardy
- Narrated by: Stephen Thorne
- Length: 14 hrs and 18 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The Woodlanders is vintage Hardy. The story revolves around the young woman Grace Melbury, who returns to the leafy world of Little Hintock and soon finds herself at the center of a number of tragic events. In penetrating, incisive, and beautiful prose, Hardy tells a moving tale of unrequited love as fate and the constraints of society thwart the happiness of our heroine. The leafy world of Blackmoor Vale and the hamlet of Little Hintock are all lovingly described by Hardy, who named The Woodlanders as the favorite of all his novels.
-
-
A Masterpiece of writing and narration!
- By Kathi on 05-17-14
By: Thomas Hardy
-
Desperate Remedies
- By: Thomas Hardy
- Narrated by: Melody Grove
- Length: 15 hrs and 39 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Cytherea has taken a position as lady's maid to the eccentric Miss Aldclyffe. On discovering that the man she loves is already engaged to his cousin, Cytherea comes under the influence of Miss Aldclyffe's fascinating, manipulative steward Manston. Desperate Remedies contains sensational ingredients of blackmail, murder and romance, but with its insight into psychology and sexuality it already bears the unmistakable imprint of Hardy’s future genius.
-
-
Romance with substance
- By Joanna Sakievich on 12-28-24
By: Thomas Hardy
-
A Pair of Blue Eyes
- By: Thomas Hardy
- Narrated by: Anna Bentinck
- Length: 16 hrs
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Hardy's third novel, A Pair of Blue Eyes, follows the story of Elfride Swancourt. The daughter of the rector of Endelstow, a sparse, sea-swept parish in Cornwall, Elfride is caught between two suitors of very different backgrounds: Stephen Smith, a young architect restoring the old parish church; and the respectable, older man of London society, Henry Knight. The blue-eyed and high-spirited protagonist must untangle the conflicting messages of her heart and her mind.
-
-
Depressing story & unbelievable central character
- By Molly R. on 08-14-17
By: Thomas Hardy
-
Far from the Madding Crowd (Adaptation)
- Oxford Bookworms Library
- By: Thomas Hardy, Clare West - adaptation
- Narrated by: Janet Moore
- Length: 3 hrs and 8 mins
- Abridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Bathsheba Everdene is young, proud, and beautiful. She is an independent woman and can marry any man she chooses - if she chooses. In fact, she likes her independence, and she likes fighting her own battles in a man’s world. But it is never wise to ignore the power of love. There are three men who would very much like to marry Bathsheba. When she falls in love with one of them, she soon wishes she had kept her independence.
-
-
Engaging
- By Kindle Customer on 03-18-19
By: Thomas Hardy, and others
-
The Return of the Native
- By: Thomas Hardy
- Narrated by: Simon Vance
- Length: 13 hrs and 18 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
One of Thomas Hardy's classic statements about modern love, courtship, and marriage, The Return of the Native is set in the pastoral village of Egdon Heath. The fiery Eustacia Vye, wishing only for passionate love, believes that her escape from Egdon lies in her marriage to Clym Yeobright, the returning "native", home from Paris and discontented with his work there.
-
-
How Sweet the Sound
- By KP on 04-10-13
By: Thomas Hardy
-
Our Mutual Friend
- By: Charles Dickens
- Narrated by: Simon Vance
- Length: 31 hrs and 15 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
A sinister masterpiece, Our Mutual Friend was Dickens' last completed novel. It is perhaps his ultimate vision of a dark, macabre London and the corrupting power of money.
-
-
Worth six stars
- By Erez on 07-05-08
By: Charles Dickens
-
Middlemarch
- By: George Eliot
- Narrated by: Juliet Stevenson
- Length: 35 hrs and 38 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Dorothea Brooke is an ardent idealist who represses her vivacity and intelligence for the cold, theological pedant Casaubon. One man understands her true nature: the artist Will Ladislaw. But how can love triumph against her sense of duty and Casaubon’s mean spirit? Meanwhile, in the little world of Middlemarch, the broader world is mirrored: the world of politics, social change, and reforms, as well as betrayal, greed, blackmail, ambition, and disappointment.
-
-
Best Audible book ever
- By Molly-o on 12-25-11
By: George Eliot
-
Little Dorrit
- By: Charles Dickens
- Narrated by: Simon Vance
- Length: 31 hrs and 49 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Little Dorrit is Amy, born in debtor’s prison, the youngest child of debtor William Dorrit, an inmate of the Marshalsea. The two are befriended by a man whose wife hires Little Dorrit as a seamstress. When William Dorrit inherits a fortune, he escapes the Marshalsea. The family, assuming a station befitting their wealth, travel to Italy.
-
-
Gripping
- By eva on 09-17-12
By: Charles Dickens
-
Hard Times
- By: Charles Dickens
- Narrated by: Anton Lesser
- Length: 10 hrs and 41 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Hard Times is Dickens's most political novel. Set in the industrial north of England, in Coketown, he examines the lives of working people, who are taught by the capitalists Gradgrind and Bounderby to think only of the facts of life and not to indulge in imagination. Gradgrind’s own children have been so educated and as a result are dysfunctional and disconnected from their feelings. Only the travelling circus company of Sleary seems to offer any hope of humanity in Coketown.
-
-
Very glad I kept going!
- By Bon Ami on 03-01-16
By: Charles Dickens
-
The Mill on the Floss
- By: George Eliot
- Narrated by: Fiona Shaw
- Length: 20 hrs and 56 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The Mill on the Floss is one of the great works of English literature. It is perhaps the most autobiographical of all Eliot's novels. The relationship between its heroine, Maggie Tulliver, and her brother, Tom, closely resembles that of George Eliot and her own brother, Isaac. The subject of sibling affection was clearly a deeply poignant one for George Eliot - she also wrote a series of beautiful and evocative sonnets entitled 'Brother and Sister'.
-
-
Fiona Shaw makes George Eliot endurable
- By Starr on 04-21-16
By: George Eliot
-
Remembrance of Things Past
- Swann's Way
- By: Marcel Proust, Scott Moncrieff - translator
- Narrated by: John Rowe
- Length: 19 hrs and 44 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Swann's Way is Marcel Proust's literary masterpiece and the first part of the multivolume audiobook Remembrance of Things Past. In the opening volume, the narrator travels back in time to recall his childhood and to introduce the listener to Charles Swann, a wealthy friend of the family and celebrity in the Parisian social scene. He again travels back, this time to the youth of Charles Swann in the French town of Combray, to tell the story of the love affair that took place before his own birth.
-
-
EXCELLENT!
- By Maggie on 08-18-10
By: Marcel Proust, and others
-
Barnaby Rudge
- By: Charles Dickens
- Narrated by: Sean Barrett
- Length: 26 hrs and 32 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
For the background to this historical novel, a tale of mystery, suspense and unsolved murder, Dickens chose the anti-Catholic Gordon Riots of 1780. Mayhem reigns in the streets of London, vividly described by Dickens, and the innocent Barnaby Rudge is drawn into the thick of it.
-
-
Wonderful
- By Tad Davis on 12-23-13
By: Charles Dickens
-
Oliver Twist
- By: Charles Dickens
- Narrated by: Simon Vance
- Length: 16 hrs and 7 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
After escaping from the dark and dismal workhouse where he was born, Oliver finds himself on the mean streets of Victorian-era London and is unwittingly recruited into a scabrous gang of scheming urchins. In this band of petty thieves, Oliver encounters the extraordinary and vibrant characters who have captured audiences' imaginations for more than 150 years.
-
-
Amazing narration!
- By Karen on 12-11-08
By: Charles Dickens
-
11-22-63
- A Novel
- By: Stephen King
- Narrated by: Craig Wasson
- Length: 30 hrs and 40 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
On November 22, 1963, three shots rang out in Dallas, President Kennedy died, and the world changed. What if you could change it back? In this brilliantly conceived tour de force, Stephen King - who has absorbed the social, political, and popular culture of his generation more imaginatively and thoroughly than any other writer - takes listeners on an incredible journey into the past and the possibility of altering it.
-
-
I Owe Stephen King An Apology
- By Kelly - Write Well Academy on 04-16-12
By: Stephen King
-
Fall of Giants
- Book One of the Century Trilogy
- By: Ken Follett
- Narrated by: John Lee
- Length: 30 hrs and 38 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Ken Follett's World Without End was a global phenomenon, a work of grand historical sweep beloved by millions of readers and acclaimed by critics. Fall of Giants is his magnificent new historical epic. The first novel in The Century Trilogy, it follows the fates of five interrelated families - American, German, Russian, English, and Welsh - as they move through the world-shaking dramas of the First World War, the Russian Revolution, and the struggle for women's suffrage.
-
-
Loved it and learned alot.
- By Louis on 10-19-10
By: Ken Follett
Classic Hardy - a great novel
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
Good book with usual Hardy tragedy
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
Thomas Hardy is a favorite of mine, and this narration did the work full justice
Excellent Narration
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
Delightful Classic
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
What made the experience of listening to Hardy: The Mayor of Casterbridge the most enjoyable?
The reader was excellent. And the story was tight and true to his development of the characters.What was one of the most memorable moments of Hardy: The Mayor of Casterbridge?
The ending.What about Anton Lesser’s performance did you like?
Excellent depiction of each character.Was there a moment in the book that particularly moved you?
Henchard's inevitable return to his beginning.Any additional comments?
Hardy is not optimistic about human nature or life but quite realistic. So much of his depiction of us human beings still rings true--a classic.Classic Hardy
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
Excellent Book, Hard to understand the Narrator
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
Of course, this being Hardy, nothing works out the way you want for the characters you care about. His main character, Henchard -- the Mayor of the title (or one of them, at any rate) -- is a morally complex man, someone who really wants to do the right thing but is often overtaken by his own passions, coincidence, or bad luck. (At one point near the end of the story, he starts out to do something really nasty, then changes his mind and decides to the right thing, but by sheer accident the nasty thing happens anyway.)
You either like Hardy or you don't. If you like him, you'll probably like Anton Lesser's interpretation as well. I really do hope Lesser takes on a few more of Hardy's books.
Superb
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
Continuing the Hardy Binge, Happily
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
Well,although the story still holds the attention,it seems that Hardy and I have grown older.
The portrait of English country life and morals in the early 19th century is as interesting and detailed as ever, but the plot is too predictable.
The narration is excellent,with the narrator switching easily and convincingly between male and female voices,between characters with rustic,rural accents and those with more sophisticated speech.
I still intend to download more of Hardys' books,they are after all,classics.
Hardy has weathered less well than I expected.
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
LOVED the language. well read .
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.