The story takes place in a small woodland village called Little Hintock, and concerns the efforts of an honest woodsman, Giles Winterborne, to marry his childhood sweetheart, Grace Melbury.

Although they have been informally betrothed for some time, her father has made financial sacrifices to give his adored only child a superior education and no longer considers Giles good enough for her.

Grace has misgivings prior to the marriage as she sees a village woman (Suke Damson) coming out of his cottage very early in the morning and suspects he has been sleeping with her.

Melbury is told by a former legal clerk down on his luck that the law was changed in the previous year (making the setting of the action 1858) and divorce is now possible.

After it is learned that Mrs Charmond has died, murdered by a jealous former lover, Grace allows herself to be won back to the (at least temporarily) repentant Fitzpiers, thus sealing her fate as the wife of an unworthy man.

This is after Suke's husband Timothy Tangs has set a man trap to try to crush Fitzpiers' leg but it only tears Grace's skirt.

She is persuaded to sell this at the start of the story to a barber who is procuring it for Mrs Charmond, after Marty realises that Giles loves Grace and not her.

[3] The novel reflects common Hardy themes: a rustic, evocative setting, poorly chosen marriage partners, unrequited love, social class mobility, and an unhappy, or at best equivocal, ending.

At this point in his career he was established enough as a writer to take risks, especially in the areas of sexuality, such as marriage, divorce, marital fidelity, and the use of unconventional plots and tones, and seemingly immoral conclusions.

[4] That marriage is less-than-exclusive in the novel is highlighted most clearly through the words and thoughts of Grace Melbury; as heroine and betrayed wife of an unfaithful husband, she ought to represent the moral centre, but she openly acknowledges sexual and marital infidelity.

[5] The late nineteenth century English author George Gissing read the novel in March 1888 "with much delight" but felt that the "human part is...painfully unsatisfactory".

Patrick Hadley's Scene from The Woodlanders (1925) sets the final words for voice and chamber ensemble and was published by Oxford University Press in 1926.