Under the Greenwood Tree; Or, The Mellstock Quire - Hardcover

by Thomas Hardy (Author)

Under the Greenwood Tree: A Rural Painting of the Dutch School is a novel by the English writer Thomas Hardy, published anonymously in 1872. It was Hardy's second published novel, and the first of what was to become his series of Wessex novels. Critics recognise it as an important precursor to his later tragic works, setting the scene for the Wessex that the author would return to again and again. Hardy himself called the story of the Mellstock Quire and its west-gallery musicians "a fairly true picture, at first hand, of the personages, ways, and customs which were common among such orchestral bodies in the villages of [the 1850s]."

Under the Greenwood Tree was published by Tinsley on 15 June 1872, with the author's name not appearing on the first edition. The novel was published in the United States in June 1873 by Holt & Williams, and was serialised there the following year. When the book was republished in the UK in 1912 by Macmillan, the full title became Under the Greenwood Tree, or, The Mellstock Quire: A Rural Painting of the Dutch School.

The story was adapted for a 1929 film, and for a 2005 ITV film (made in Jersey) with Keeley Hawes as Fancy Day and James Murray as Dick Dewy. (A 1918 US film of the same title is unconnected).

Stage

There have been several stage adaptations, including:

a production by Patrick Garland at Salisbury Playhouse which transferred to the West End Vaudeville Theatre in 1978

a production by Helen Davis that toured to a variety of locations in 2009 including Thame, Andover and Street

a 2016 production by Jack Shepherd for New Hardy Players in Dorchester

a Hammerpuzzle production that played at Gloucester and Cheltenham in 2019/20 (wikipedia.org)