The story delicately balances the concerns of the Mellstock parish choir with a romance between the village schoolmistress and a member of the choir. Hardy thought well enough of the tale to place it among his Novels of Character and Environment, a group which is held to include his most characteristic work. This edition of the novel presents a critically established text based on comparisons of every revised version, and offers the reader for the first time what Hardy wrote, and not what his printers thought he wrote (or should have written). It also includes many of the more interesting revisions in the explanatory notes.