Under the Greenwood Tree

Thomas Hardy

Set in the rural village of Mellstock, UNDER THE GREENWOOD TREE is Thomas Hardy’s first major novel and one of his most pastoral works.

It is a love story between Dick Dewy, a wagon driver, and Fancy Day, the new schoolmistress who captivates the village. Around this courtship the village church choir circles. As rustic musicians, their greatest conflict lies in how they are to be replaced by a more fashionable church organ. Like Jewett’s American pastoral A MARSH ISLAND, Hardy’s is a singularly English look into the effects of industrialism on love and community. Opening on a snowy Christmas Eve and then told in seasons, let this charming, much needed little book whisk you away.

In conversation with

Lily King is the award-winning author of six novels. Her most recent novel, Heart the Lover was published on September 30th, 2025. She has also published a collection of short stories, Five Tuesdays in Winter. Her 2020 novel, Writers & Lovers, won the New England Society Book Awards and was a New York Times Notable Book and chosen as a top-ten best book of 2020 by The Washington Post, NPR, People Magazine, and The Los Angeles Times. Her 2014 novel Euphoria won the Kirkus Award, the New England Book Award, and was a finalist for the National Book Critics Award. Euphoria was named one of the 10 Best Books of 2014 by The New York Times Book Review. It was included in TIME's Top 10 Fiction Books of 2014, as well as on Amazon, NPR, Entertainment Weekly, Publishers Weekly, and Salon’s Best Books of 2014.

Alice Elliott Dark is the author of the novels Fellowship Point and Think of England, and two collections of short stories, In The Gloaming and Naked to the Waist.  Her work has appeared in, among others, The New Yorker, Harper's, DoubleTake, Ploughshares, A Public Space, Best American Short Stories, Prize Stories: The O.Henry Awards, and has been translated into many languages. "In the Gloaming," a story, was chosen by John Updike for inclusion in The Best American Short Stories of The Century and was made into films by HBO and Trinity Playhouse. Her non-fiction reviews and essays have appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, and many anthologies. She is a recipient of a fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts. Presently she directs the MFA program and serves as a Professor at Rutgers-Newark in the English department and the MFA program.