Damon Wildeve, a local innkeeper known for his fickleness is preoccupied with Eustacia Vye, an exotically beautiful young woman who broke up with him when Clym, a successful diamond merchant, returned from Paris to his native Egdon Heath. Eustacia sees him as a way to escape the hated heath and begin a grander, richer existence in a glamorous new location. When he sees that Eustacia is lost to him, Wildeve marries Thomasin Yeobright, who gives birth to a daughter. After realizing that Clym won't fulfill her dreams, Eustacia becomes desperate, but another opportunity shows up. Wildeve has unexpectedly inherited a large sum of money, and is now in a better position to fulfill Eustacia's hopes, but he now has a wife and a child.

Thomas Hardy (1840-1928) was an English novelist and poet. A Victorian realist in the tradition of George Eliot, he was influenced both in his novels and in his poetry by Romanticism, especially William Wordsworth. He was highly critical of much in Victorian society, especially on the declining status of rural people in Britain, such as those from his native South West England. His most famous novels include Tess of the d'Urbervilles, Far from the Madding Crowd and Jude the Obscure.