Set against the background of the Napoleonic wars, The Trumpet-Major, now available in this new edition, is one of Hardy's most fascinating stories of love and desire. Anne Garland, who lives with her widowed mother in a mill owned by Miller Loveday, has three suitors: the squire's son Festus and the miller's two sons, Robert and John, a sailor and soldier respectively. As the Wessex village prepares for possible invasion by Napoleon's fleet, Anne finds her destiny increasingly tangled up with the events of history. By a sophisticated shuffling of the literary modes of comedy, romance, and history, Hardy depicts the incongruities of individual experience and social values.
