Far From the Madding Crowd #220084

I did not anticipate that this application of the word to modern story would extend «outside the chapters Of these particular chronicles. But it was soon taken up elsewhere, the first to adopt it being the now defunct Examiner, which, in the impression bearing date july 15, 1876, entitled one of its articles The Wessex Labourer, the article turning out to'be no dissertation on farming during the Heptarchy, but on the modern peasant of the south-west counties.