On this day in 1885, Thomas Hardy's The Mayor of Casterbridge began serialization. This was the first novel Hardy wrote for weekly rather than monthly serialization, and his journal entry for this day expresses his worry that he had overplayed the need for a steady stream of drama by incorporating too many "improbabilities of incident." More than one early reviewer did indeed find the novel "too improbable," Hardy's famous wife-selling opening being particularly "impossible to believe." In fact, Hardy's notebooks show that he had found three such incidents in the local records for the 1820s time period, two of them describing not only that the wife was sold but that she was also led through the streets with a halter around her neck ... FULL STORY »
