The Trumpet-Major Author:Thomas Hardy Hardy distrusted the application of nineteenth-century empiricism to history because he felt it marginalized important human elements. In The Trumpet Major, the tale of a woman courted by three competing suitors during the Napoleonic wars, he explores the subversive effects of ordinary human desire and conflicting loyalties on systematized vers... more »ions of history. This edition restores Hardy's original punctuation and removes the bowdlerisms forced upon the text on its initial publication.« less