Anne Garland, who lives with her widowed mother in a mill owned by Miller Loveday, has three suitors: the squire's nephew Festus and the miller's two sons, Robert and John. As the Wessex village prepares for possible invasion by Napoleon's fleet, Anne finds her destiny increasingly tangled up with the events of history. For Robert is a sailor while John is a soldier, both with equal commitments to their country and their love for Anne. Lyrical and light-hearted in tone, yet shot through with Hardy's characteristic irony, The Trumpet-Major is one of Hardy's most underrated and unpredictable works. In her Introduction to this new edition, Linda Shires demonstrates how the novelist defies the reader's expectations by his parallel use of literary modes, which call each other into question: comedy, romance and historical narrative.