Weatherbury Farm

About the Book

In Far From the Madding Crowd, which is perhaps Thomas Hardy’s most popular novel, we leave Gabriel Oak and Bathsheba Everdene newly-married. Now, many years on, Bathsheba’s husband and three almost grown-up children have superseded the three diverse suitors of her youth. Bathsheba’s caprice and wilfulness has been replaced with the trials and tribulations of family life. All three children reject the careers chosen for them by their parents to become evermore cosmopolitan in their lives and outlook.

As the children mature and make fewer demands on her time, Bathsheba becomes involved with Gabriel’s mission to improve the working and living conditions of agricultural labourers. She strives against prejudice to form a women’s movement to uphold and promote the rights of Union members’ wives. But as Industrialisation filters slowly into Hardy’s Victorian rural scenes, the Oak family find Wessex life is changing forever. Is this change for the better?

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About the Author

Patricia Dolling-Mann was born in Northampton starting work in a newspaper office with a view to becoming a reporter. After a short time she realised her vocation was to nurse. During her career as a college nurse she studied part-time with the Open University where she gained an honours degree in English Social History and Literature. A passion for the writings of Thomas Hardy prompted her and her husband to move, nine years ago, to Dorset where they have settled happily. Early retirement from the nursing profession has given her time to fulfil her lifelong ambition to become a published author. Her first novel Weatherbury Farm, a sequel to Thomas Hardy’s Far From the Madding Crowd, was published in 1999. A Claim to Kin is her second book and another of the Wessex Chronicles. She is presently writing her third novel, a sequel to Hardy’s, Tess of the d’Urbervilles