Which Thomas Hardy novel features the character Gabriel Oak?

Thomas Hardy’s novel featuring Gabriel Oak is Far from the Madding Crowd. Oak is a young shepherd whose life becomes bound up with Bathsheba Everdene, William Boldwood, and Sergeant Francis Troy in Hardy’s rural Wessex.

Published in 1874, the novel was Hardy’s fourth published novel and his first major literary success. It first appeared anonymously as a serial in Cornhill Magazine, where it quickly attracted a wide readership. Gabriel begins as a prosperous shepherd, but a disastrous accident destroys his flock and leaves him penniless. He later becomes Bathsheba’s shepherd and remains a steady presence through the novel’s tragedies.

Readers sometimes confuse this book with The Mayor of Casterbridge, another Hardy novel set in Wessex, or with Tess of the d’Urbervilles. Gabriel Oak belongs only to Far from the Madding Crowd. The title comes from Thomas Gray’s 1751 poem “Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard,” and “madding” means frenzied or wildly excited.