Hardy Thomas

Young Tess Durbeyfield attempts to restore her family's fortunes by claiming their connection with the aristocratic d'Urbervilles. But Alec d'Urberville is a rich wastrel who seduces her and makes her life miserable. When she meets Angel Clare, she is offered true love and happiness, but her past catches up with her and she faces an agonizing...

This has to be my favorite of all Thomas Hardys many classic works. Far from the Madding Crowd was published in 1874 when the novelist was 34 years old. It is one of the earliest works of English literature I can think of which has a fully rounded, fully independent, fully human female protagonist. Bathsheba Everdene runs a farm, is only semi-aware...

Love, and the erratic heart, are at the centre of Hardy's 'woodland story'. The romantic entanglements of Giles Winterborne, Grace Melbury, the dissolute Edred Fitzpiers and the wealthy Felice Charmond are bound up with issues of class and social status as they make their marital choices. This is the only critical edition of the novel,...

Michael Henchard sells his wife and baby daughter on a drunken impulse at a local fair. Eighteeen years later his temperament again thwarts his attempts to make amends. Henchard is a modern-day tragic hero, but his story is also a journey towards love. This edition is the only critically established text of the novel and Pamela Dalziel's...

Blue-eyed and high-spirited, Elfride Swancourt has little experience of the world beyond her remote parish, 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. Elfride's dilemma mirrors the difficult...