Set in the village of Mellstock and its surrounding farms and woodlands, it interweaves the story of Dick Dewy and Fancy Day's lingering courtship with the battle for survival of the old
Mellstock string choir against the mechanical church organ of the new vicar, the Reverend Maybold.
Under the Greenwood Tree appears to be pastoral romance at its most sunlit and good-humoured, and has been called the 'most nearly flawless of Hardy's novels'. Yet, as Tim Dolin shows in his
Introduction, there is a darker side to this paradise, seen particularly in the conflicts arising over anachronistic customs and rituals, and the ambiguities surrounding Fancy's forthcoming
marriage. For Hardy, who drew out the associations with his own childhood in later revisions, the novel came to epitomize a past that had been forever lost to him and to England.
