Far From the Madding Crowd

The title is meant to be ironic, as the life of the book's heroine, Bathsheba Everdene, living in the quiet rural village of Weatherbury is indeed disrupted by the "madding crowd". After shunning the first man to love her, Gabriel Oak, she is courted by two others; the lonely and repressed Boldwood, and the charming but faithless Sergeant Troy. The book is widely seen as Hardy's first masterpiece.