Under the Greenwood Tree

Thomas Hardy's gentlest novel follows a village choir facing extinction and a young schoolmistress courted by three suitors, offering a warm, wry pastoral of a rural England already vanishing.

At a glance In a Wessex hamlet, the old church musicians tune their instruments for one last… What it's about Under the Greenwood Tree is subtitled a rural painting of the Dutch… It tells two intertwined stories: the gentle displacement of the Mellstock church band… Organised around the turning seasons, it is Hardy at his sunniest and most affectionate.

Under the Greenwood Tree is subtitled a rural painting of the Dutch school, and it lives up to the phrase. It tells two intertwined stories: the gentle displacement of the Mellstock church band by a modern organ, and…

About this book Thomas Hardy’s early novel turns a Dorset village choir and a gently complicated courtship into a warm rural comedy rich in custom, music, and seasonal atmosphere.