The Mayor of Casterbridge: The Life and Death of a Man of Character is an 1886 novel by the English author Thomas Hardy. One of Hardy’s Wessex novels, it is set in a fictional rural England with Casterbridge standing in for Dorchester in Dorset where the author spent his youth. The next interesting thing is that it goes along with the novel’s title because the novel is not named Michael Henchard but it is named The Mayor of Casterbridge: The Life and Death of a Man of Character. technique he makes his character universal- he (Henchard) could be anyone.