In 1910 Hardy was awarded the freedom of the Borough of Dorchester. In the speech he delivered on that occasion he explained:

I may be allowed to confess that the freedom of the Borough of Dorchester did seem to me at first something I had possessed a long while, ... for when I consider the liberties I have taken with its ancient walls, streets, and precincts through the medium of the printing-press, I feel that I have treated its external features with the hand of freedom indeed. True, it might be urged that my Casterbridge (if I may mention seriously a name coined off-hand in a moment with no thought of its becoming established and localized) is not Dorchester--not even the Dorchester that existed 60 years ago, but a dream-place that never was outside an irresponsible book. Nevertheless, when somebody said to me that 'Casterbridge' is a sort of essence of the town as it used to be, 'a place more Dorchester than Dorchester itself', I could not absolutely contradict him, though I could not quite perceive it. At any rate, it is not a photograph in words, that inartistic species of literary produce, particularly in respect to personages. ... The chronicle of the town has vivid marks on it. Not to go back to events of National importance, lurid scenes have been enacted here within living memory, or not so many years beyond it ... . Then, if one were to recount the election excitements, Free Trade riots, scenes of soldiers marching down the town to war, the proclamation of Sovereigns now crumbled to dust, it would be an interesting local story. (1)

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