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Upon its first appearance in 1895, Thomas Hardy’s Jude the Obscure shocked Victorian critics and readers with a frank depiction of sexuality and an unbridled indictment of the institutions of marriage, education, and religion, reportedly causing one Angli-can bishop to order the book publicly burned. The experience so exhausted Hardy that he never wrote a work of fiction again.
Rich in symbolism, Jude the Obscure is the story of Jude Fawley and his struggle to rise from his station as a poor Wessex stonemason to that of a scholar at Christminster. It is also the story of Jude’s ill-fated relationship with his cousin Sue Bridehead, and the ultimate tragedy that causes Jude’s undoing and Sue’s transformation. Jude the Obscure explores man’s essential loneliness and remains one of Hardy’s most widely read novels.
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Thomas Hardy saw himself, first and foremost, as a poet, and he wrote poetry throughout his prolific and acclaimed novel-writing years before announcing in 1896 that he would no longer write novels, much to the astonishment of his worldwide readership. Instead he went on to publish eight masterful volumes of poetry - ranging from lyrics and ballads to dramatic monologues and satire - and is now regarded as one of the greatest twentieth-century poets.
Choosing the best verse from each volume, the Poems of Thomas Hardy is the perfect introduction to Hardy's lyrical, soul-searching and profoundly sincere poetry, covering subjects ranging from his grief at the death of his first wife to his experiences of war.
This beautiful Macmillan Collector's Library edition is edited and introduced by editor Ned Halley.
Designed to appeal to the booklover, the Macmillan Collector's Library is a series of beautiful gift editions of much loved classic titles. Macmillan Collector's Library are books to love and treasure....
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Love and the erratic heart are at the center of Hardy's "woodland story." Set in the beautiful Blackmoor Vale, The Woodlanders concerns the fortunes of Giles Winterborne, whose love for the well-to-do Grace Melbury is challenged by the arrival of the dashing and dissolute doctor, Edred Fitzpiers. When the mysterious Felice Charmond further complicates the romantic entanglements, marital choice and class mobility become inextricably linked. Hardy's powerful novel depicts individuals in thrall to desire and the natural law that motivates them.
This is the only critical edition of the novel, which was Hardy's own favorite "as a story," that is based on a comprehensive study of the manuscript and incorporates later revisions. The new introduction by Penny Boumelha considers the novel in the context of Hardy's career, the characters' relationships with one another, the role of destiny and individual choice, narrative perspective, and the community. This edition also contains a new and up-to-date bibliography and a new chronology....
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Now considered his best work, Thomas Hardy's novel about a stonemason excluded from the privileged world of learning by class, and his relationship with an emancipated woman, scandalized the late Victorian establishment and marked the end of his career as a novelist. This new Penguin Classics edition reprints the original 1895 edition and includes Hardy's "Postscript" of 1912....
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In this, his first collection of short stories, Hardy sought to record the legends, superstitions, local customs, and lore of a Wessex that was rapidly passing out of memory. But these tales also portray the social and economic stresses of 1880s Dorset, and reveal Hardy's growing scepticism about the possibility of achieving personal and sexual satisfaction in the modern world. By turns humorous, ironic, macabre, and elegiac, these seven stories show the range of Hardy's story-telling genius.
The critically established text, the first to be based on detailed study of all revised texts, presents manuscript readings which have never before appeared in print. The stories include The Three Strangers; A Tradition of Eighteen Hundred and Four; The Melancholy Hussar of the German Legion; The Withered Arm; Fellow-Townsmen; Interlopers at the Knap; The Distracted Preacher...
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A young man falls victim to his own obsession with an amorous farm girl in this classic novel of fate and unrequited love. Published anonymously and first attributed, erroneously, to George Eliot, this Signet Classic version is set from Hardy's revised final draft-the authoritative Wessex edition of 1912....
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Far from the Madding Crowd, Hardy’s passionate tale of the beautiful, headstrong farmer Bathsheba Everdene and her three suitors, firmly established the thirty-four-year-old writer as a popular novelist. According to Virginia Woolf, “The subject was right; the method was right; the poet and the countryman, the sensual man, the sombre reflective man, the man of learning, all enlisted to produce a book which . . . must hold its place among the great English novels.” Introducing the fictional name of “Wessex” to describe Hardy’s legendary countryside, this early masterpiece draws a vivid picture of rural life in southwest England.
This Modern Library Paperback Classic is set from the 1912 Wessex edition and features Hardy’s map of Wessex....
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Edited with an Introduction and Notes by Keith Wilson....
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Coming to PBS in January 2009- a MasterpieceTM Classic production of Thomas Hardy's Tess of the D'UrbervillesTess Durbeyfield knows what it is to work hard and expect little. But her life is about to veer from the path trod by her mother and grandmother. When her ne'er-do-well father learns that his family is the last of a long noble line, the d'Urbervilles, he sends Tess on a journey to meet her supposed kin- a journey that will see her victimized by lust, poverty, and hypocrisy. With its sensitive depiction of one of literature's most admirable and tragic heroines and its powerful criticism of social convention, Tess of the D'Urbervilles is one of the most moving and poetic of Thomas Hardy's novels....
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Hardy's first published work, Desperate Remedies moves the sensation novel into new territory. The anti-hero, Aeneas Manston, as physically alluring as he is evil, even fascinates the innocent Cytherea, though she is in love with another man. When he cannot seduce her, Manston resorts to deception, blackmail, bigamy, murder, and rape. Yet this compelling story also raises the great questions underlying Hardy's major novels, which relate to the injustice of the class system, the treatment of women, probability and causality. This edition shows for the first time that the sensation novel was always Hardy's natural genre. It is based on the first edition text, and includes later prefaces and the Wessex Poems "dissolved" into prose....
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Edited with an Introduction and Notes by Rosemarie Morgan with Shannon Russell....
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The arrival of two newcomers in the quiet village of Mellstock arouses a bitter feud and leaves a convoluted love affair in its wake. While the Reverend Maybold creates a furore among the village's musicians with his decision to abolish the church's traditional 'string choir' and replace it with a modern mechanical organ, the new schoolteacher, Fancy Day, causes an upheaval of a more romantic nature, winning the hearts of three very different men - a local farmer, a church musician and Maybold himself. "Under the Greenwood Tree" follows the ensuing maze of intrigue and passion with gentle humour and sympathy, deftly evoking the richness of village life, yet tinged with melancholy for a rural world that Hardy saw fast disappearing....
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Clym Yeobright returns from Paris to the village of his birth, inspired to improve the life of its men and women. But his plans are upset when he falls in love with a beautiful, darkly discontented girl, Eustacia Vye, who longs to escape from her provincial surroundings....
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Elfride Swancourt is the daughter of the Rector of Endelstow, a remote sea-swept parish in Corwall based on St Juliot, where Hardy began A Pair of Blue Eyes during the beginning of his courtship of his first wife, Emma. Blue-eyed and high-spirited, Elfride has little experience of the world beyond, and becomes entangled with two men: the boyish architect, Stephen Smith, and the older literary man, Henry Knight. The former friends become rivals, and Elfride faces an agonizing choice. Written at a crucial time in Hardy's life, A Pair of Blue Eyes expresses more directly than any of his novels the events and social forces that made him the writer he was. Elfride's dilemma mirrors the difficult decision Hardy himself had to make with this novel: to pursue the profession of architecture, where he was established, or literature, where he had yet to make his name. This updated edition contains a new introduction, bibliography, and chronology....
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The tragic story of Michael Henchard and his painful quest to be forgotten-an unforgettable tale of love, greed, and loss. THIS ENRICHED CLASSIC EDITION INCLUDES: • A concise introduction that gives the reader important background information • A chronology of the author's life and work • A timeline of significant events that provides the book's historical context • An outline of key themes to guide the reader's own interpretations • Detailed explanatory notes • Critical analysis, including contemporary and modern perspectives on the work • Discussion questions to promote lively classroom and book group interaction • A list of recommended related books and films to broaden the reader's experience Enriched Classics offer readers affordable editions of great works of literature enhanced by helpful notes and insightful commentary. The scholarship provided in Enriched Classics enables readers to appreciate, understand, and enjoy the world's finest books to their full potential....
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Edited with Notes by Tim Dolin and an Introduction by Margaret R. Higonnet...
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A poetic and compassionate novel of 19th Century England....
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Hardy's last and most controversial novel, Jude the Obscure caused much outrage when it was published in 1895. Jude Fawley, poor and working-class, longs to study at the University of Christminster, but his ambitions to go to university are thwarted by class prejudice and his entrapment in a loveless marriage. He falls in love with his unconventional cousin, Sue Bridehead, and their refusal to marry when free to do so confirms their rejection of and by the world around them. The shocking fate that overtakes them is an indictment of a rigid and uncaring society. This is the first truly critical edition, taking account of the changes that Hardy made over twenty-five years. Hardy's last, and most controversial novel, this revised edition has the first truly critical text, a new chronology and bibliography, and substantially revised notes....
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One of Hardy’s most powerful novels, The Mayor of Casterbridge opens with a shocking and haunting scene: In a drunken rage, Michael Henchard sells his wife and daughter to a visiting sailor at a local fair. When they return to Casterbridge some nineteen years later, Henchard—having gained power and success as the mayor—finds he cannot erase the past or the guilt that consumes him. The Mayor of Casterbridge is a rich, psychological novel about a man whose own flaws combine with fate to cause his ruin.
This Modern Library Paperback Classic reprints the authoritative 1912 Wessex edition, as well as Hardy’s map of Wessex....
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This Third Edition of Tess of the D'Urbervilles introduces the highly praised 1983 Clarendon text edited by Juliet Grindle and Simon Gatrell. The text is fully annotated and includes a separate table of contents for the novel to assist readers in locating specific episodes or passages. Hardy's hand-drawn map of Wessex and the manuscript title page for the first edition of his novel are also included. Hardy and the Novel includes seven poems by Hardy that provide greater insight into his ethos; selections from Michael Millgate's biography of Hardy that depict the relationship between episodes in Tess of the D'Urbervilles and events in the author's life; and excerpts from Grindle and Gatrell's introduction to the 1983 edition that discuss Hardy's revision process in both manuscripts and early printed editions of the novel. Criticism features three contemporary reviews of the novel not printed in the earlier Norton editions, including the first feminist review of Tess of the D'Urbervilles. Also new are "A Chat with Mr. Hardy," a hitherto unprinted post-publication interview with the author about his new novel, and five carefully selected critical interpretations. Essays by Elliot B. Gose, Jr., Peter R. Morton, and Gillian Beer address Hardy's debt to Charles Darwin, perhaps the single most important influence on Hardy's thought and imagination; Raymond Williams's essay presents a Marxist perspective; and Adrian Poole discusses the significance of Hardy's wisdom concerning "the trouble men's words have with women and the trouble women have with men's words." A Chronology, new to this edition, and a Selected Bibliography are included. ....
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A ne'er-do-well exploits his gentle daughter's beauty for social advancement in this masterpiece of tragic fiction. Hardy's 1891 novel defied convention to focus on the rural lower class for a frank treatment of sexuality and religion. Then and now, his sympathetic portrait of a victim of Victorian hypocrisy offers compelling reading. ...
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Tess is an innocent young girl until the day she goes to visit her rich "relatives," the D’Urbervilles, in hope that they might help her alleviate her own family’s poverty. Her encounter with her manipulative cousin, Alec, leads her onto a path that is beset with suffering and betrayal. When she falls in love with another man, Angel Clare, Tess sees a potential escape from her past, but only if she can tell him her shameful secret. ...
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A new edition of Thomas Hardy's timeless novel of two pairs of mismatched lovers.
One of Hardy's classic statements about modern love, courtship, and marriage, The Return of the Native is set in the pastoral village of Egdon Heath. The fiery Eustacia Vye, wishing only for passionate love, believes that her escape from Egdon lies in her marriage to Clym Yeobright, the returning "native," home from Paris and discontented with his work there. Clym wishes to remain in Egdon, however--a desire that sets him in opposition to his wife and brings them both to despair. Behind the narrative of The Return of the Native lie the tragic fates of Flaubert's Madame Bovary and Oedipus, and in writing the novel Hardy endowed his ordinary characters with the status of tragic heroes, seen especially in the ill-fated lovers and Damon Wildeve, who spoil their chances to master their own destinies. The Introduction and Notes featured in this new edition incorporate the most up-to-date scholarship on Thomas Hardy.
Edited with Notes by Tony Slade with an Introduction by Penny Boumelha....
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"Far from the Madding Crowd" was Hardy's fourth novel, gaining significant popularity and critical attention. It tells of Gabriel, an up-and-coming shepherd, who falls in love with a proud and vain young beauty Bathsheba, who refuses his offer of marriage as she values her independence too much. The novel can be described as an early piece of feminist literature and is regularly studied in schools. This is part of the "Young Adult Classics" series launched by Naxos AudioBooks in 2009. This edition includes a bonus CD-ROM which contains the abridged and unabridged texts, and Top Teacher's Notes by high profile English teacher Francis Gilbert....
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Introduction by Craig Raine...
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Introduction by Michael Slater...
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A ne'er-do-well exploits his gentle daughter's beauty for social advancement in Thomas Hardy's compelling masterpiece of tragic fiction....
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Socially critical and emotionally complex, Tess of the D'Urbervilles is Hardy's masterpiece. It tells the story of Tess Durbeyfield, forced by her family's poverty to claim kinship with the wealthy D'Urbervilles.Violated by the son, Alec, her hopes of rebuilding her life with the gentle and bookish Angel Clare founder when he learns of her past. Set among the lush pastures and bleak uplands of Hardy's imagined Wessex, and filled with unforgettable images of tenderness and tragedy, the story examines conventional morality through Tess herself, one of the best-loved characters in English literature....
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From its spectacular opening–the astonishing scene in which drunken Michael Henchard sells his wife and daughter to a passing sailor at a county fair–to the breathtaking series of discoveries at its conclusion, The Mayor of Casterbridge claims a unique place among Thomas Hardy’s finest and most powerful novels.
Rooted in an actual case of wife-selling in early nineteenth-century England, the story build into an awesome Sophoclean drama of guilt and revenge, in which the strong, willful Henchard rises to a position of wealth and power–only to suffer a most bitter downfall. Proud, obsessed, ultimately committed to his own destruction, Henchard is, as Albert Guerard has said, “Hardy’s Lord Jim…his only tragic hero and one of the greatest tragic heroes in all fiction....
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Introduction by John Bayley...
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One of literature's greatest and most tragic heroines. A beautiful and hearty farm girl, Tess Durbeyfield is about to have her life tragically changed by forces outside her control: lust, poverty, and hypocrisy. This controversial Victorian tale has come to be recognized as a triumph of literary art....
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When Tess Durbeyfield is driven by family poverty to claim kinship with the wealthy D'Urbervilles and seek a portion of their family fortune, meeting her 'cousin' Alec proves to be her downfall. A very different man, Angel Clare, seems to offer her love and salvation, but Tess must choose whether to reveal her past or remain silent in the hope of a peaceful future. With its sensitive depiction of the wronged Tess and powerful criticism of social convention, Tess of the D'Urbervilles is one of the most moving and poetic of Hardy's novels....
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This is Hardy's two versions of a strange story set in the weird landscape of Portland. The central figure is a man obsessed both with the search for his ideal woman and with sculpting the perfect figure of Aphrodite....
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