native region. Purchasing a small piece of property on the
outskirts of Dorchester across the valley of the Froom
from the upland hamlet of his birth, he commenced to
build "Max Gate," the house to which countless lovers
of his books have gone on pilgrimage ever since. He was
his own architect and found recreation and mental refresh-
ment in superintending its construction. There he lived
till his death in 1928.

In 1884 he started The Mayor of Casterbridge, com-
pleting it in April, 1885, just two months before the Hardys
moved into their new home. At the height of his powers
as a novelist, he was also sufficiently secure in reputation
and financial position to permit him to resist the pressure
of publishers and to proceed at a pace of his own choosing.
Like Dickens, he had been through the distracting experi-
ence of beginning serial publication of a novel before the
serialization of its predecessor was completed, and he
would not bind himself again to any similar contract.
There are still the unevennesses of style which mar his
work, in particular the plodding, pedestrian expository
passages which though necessary to the action do not
awaken his interest, but they are due not to taking too
little thought but too much. The new book appeared in
weekly installments in The Graphic between January and
May, 1886. The stigmata of this mode of publication are
recognizable, as in so much Victorian fiction, in the too
frequent and too regularly recurring exciting incidents and
subordinate climaxes, each of which was designed to leave
the reader eager for the next number. In the invention of
such incidents Hardy's imagination never fails him, and
they are certainly a triumph of the story-teller's art; but

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