far from the madding crowd. The New Dictionary of Cultural Literacy, Third Edition. 2002

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The New Dictionary of Cultural Literacy, Third Edition. 2002.

far from the madding crowd


A phrase adapted from the “Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard,” by Thomas Gray: madding means “frenzied.” The lines containing the phrase speak of the people buried in the churchyard: “Far from the madding crowd’s ignoble strife / Their sober wishes never learned to stray.”	1
‡ In the late nineteenth century, the English author Thomas Hardy named one of his novels Far from the Madding Crowd.	2

The New Dictionary of Cultural Literacy, Third Edition. Edited by E.D. Hirsch, Jr., Joseph F. Kett, and James Trefil. Copyright © 2002 by Houghton Mifflin Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved.

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