The King's Arms, Dorchester

[Hardy's King's Arms, Casterbridge]

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Source of photograph: The Mayor of Casterbridge [1886] in the Anniversary Edition of the Wessex Novels, 1920, facing title-page.

Scanned image (2002) by Philip V. Allingham; text by Allingham and George P. Landow.

[You may use this image without prior permission for any scholarly or educational purpose as long as you (1) credit the person who scanned the image and (2) link your document to this URL.]

According to the editors, many of whose remarks seem based on Thomas Hardy's Wessex (1913) by Herman Lea,

The King's Arms' Hotel (figuring under its rightful name) stands in the High Street, and is the chief hotel in the place. Its "spacious bow-window projected into the street over the main portico," through which Mrs. Henchard saw her husband being entertained as Mayor of Casterbridge. F. B. Pinion notes that Bathsheba, upon learning of Frank Troy's drowning, was carried by Boldwood into the King'as Arms (in Far From the Madding Crowd. In The Trumpet Major, "Bob Loveday went one Sunday to meet the mail-coach at the King's Arms, expecting Matilda Johnson to arrive. He was disappointed. [Pinion 268].

The venerable coaching inn, rebuilt between 1800 and 1820, and featured so prominently in Far From the Madding Crowd and The Mayor of Casterbridge, is on High East Street, just below Cornhill. Another important Hardy inn, The Three Mariners' (called "The King of Prussia" in the Graphic's serial version of the 1886 novel), dating from the Elizabethan era, was pulled down at the end of the nineteenth century.

Bibliography

Hardy, Thomas. The Mayor of Casterbridge, A Story of a Man of Character. "Anniversary Edition of the Wessex Novels." New York & London: Harper & Brothers, 1920. This edition derives in part from previous editions and the photographs of 1912.

Pinion, F. B. A Hardy Companion. London and New York: St. Martin's Press and Macmillan, 1968.

Kay-Robinson, Denys. The Landscape of Thomas Hardy. Photos by Simon McBride. Exeter, Devon: Salem House; Webb & Bower, 1984.

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Last modified 19 April 2024