Graced with the splendid illustrations executed by Helen Paterson for the first edition of the novel, this special Collector's Edition of Far from the Madding Crowd also features handwritten letters and drawings by Hardy, as well as rare and intimate portraits of the author and his first wife, Emma. Here, too, readers are granted a fascinating and touching glimpse of how two great imaginative writers interact with one another: This edition reproduces the handwritten pages from Virginia Woolf's diary in which she recounts her now-famous visit with the very aged Thomas Hardy at his home, Max Gate, in 1926.

Graced with the splendid illustrations executed by Helen Paterson for the first edition of the novel, this special Collector's Edition of Far from the Madding Crowd also features handwritten letters and drawings by Hardy, as well as rare and intimate portraits of the author and his first wife, Emma. Here, too, readers are granted a fascinating and touching glimpse of how two great imaginative writers interact with one another: This edition reproduces the handwritten pages from Virginia Woolf's diary in which she recounts her now-famous visit with the very aged Thomas Hardy at his home, Max Gate, in 1926.

Thomas Hardy (2 June 1840 – 11 January 1928) was an English novelist and poet. A Victorian realist, in the tradition of George Eliot, he was also influenced both in his novels and poetry by Romanticism, especially by William Wordsworth. Charles Dickens is another important influence on Thomas Hardy. Like Dickens, he was also highly critical of much in Victorian society, though Hardy focused more on a declining rural society. While Hardy wrote poetry throughout his life, and regarded himself primarily as a poet, his first collection was not published until 1898. Initially therefore he gained fame as the author of such novels as Far from the Madding Crowd (1874), The Mayor of Casterbridge (1886), Tess of the d'Urbervilles (1891), and Jude the Obscure (1895). However, since the 1950s Hardy has been recognized as a major poet, and had a significant influence on The Movement poets of the 1950s and 1960s, including Phillip Larkin.