It also incorporates revisions that Hardy made in his "study copy" of the novel and in his marked printer's copy and page proofs for the Harper and Brothers "sixpenny edition" of 1901, whenever these revisions could be confidently judged to represent Hardy's final deliberate intent. The resulting text includes revisions by Hardy which have never appeared before in a modern edition. The novel is fully annotated and is accompanied by Hardy's map of Wessex and a simplified map of the landscape of Far from the Madding Crowd . "Textual Notes" include a list of emendations, examples of variant readings from the manuscript to the Wessex edition, and a discussion of the choice of copy text. The textual history of the novel is traced in extracts from studies by Richard Little Purdy and Simon Gatrell. "Backgrounds" includes substantial extracts from Hardy's correspondence with Leslie Stephen and is followed by a selection of contemporary reviews. Twentieth-century "Criticism" is represented by Howard Babb, Roy Morrell, Alan Friedman, J. Hillis Miller, Michael Millgate, Penelope Vigar, Peter J. Casagrande, Ian Gregor, and Albert C. Schweik. "It is among such communities as these that happiness will find her last refuge on earth..". Against this backdrop Hardy tells a vivid story of life in rural Wessex which centres on the independent and beautiful Bathsheba Everdene. She decides to manage the farm she has inherited and finds herself in a powerful position for a woman of the 1840s. But power brings tragic complications when she has to decide between three rival suitors. Thomas Hardy (1840-1928), enduring author of the twentieth century, wrote the classics Jude the Obscure , Tess of the d'Urbervilles , Far from the Madding Crowd , The Return of the Native , The Mayor of Casterbridge , and many other works. Robert C. Schweik was Distinguished Teaching Professor of English at the State University of New York, College at Fredonia, and had been Visiting Professor at the University of Wisconsin, the University of Trier, West Germany, and Stockholm University, Sweden, and a Fellow of the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Fulbright-Hays Program. He was co-author of Reference Sources in English and American Literature and Hart Crane: A Descriptive Bibliography , the editor of Wuthering Heights , and the author of articles on Hardy, Browning, and cultural history.