Böcker av Thomas Hardy

Thomas Hardy has long been critically constructed as 'poet of Wessex' and 'novelist of Character and Environment'. This volume offers to deconstruct such a mythic 'Hardy' in selecting contemporary critical essays which re-present Tess from very different critical perspectives.

The daughter of a wealthy railway magnate, Paula Power inherits De Stancy Castle, an ancient castle in need of modernization. She commissions George Somerset, a young architect, to undertake the work. Somerset falls in love with Paula but she, the Laodicean of the title, is torn between his admiration and that of Captain De Stancy, whose old-world romanticism contrasts with Somerset's forward-looking attitude. Paula's vacillation, however, is not only romantic. Her ambiguity regarding religion, politics and social progress is a reflection of the author's own. This new Penguin Classics edition of Hardy's text contains an introduction and notes that illuminate and clarify these themes, and draws parallels between the text and the author's life and views.

Adventuress and opportunist, Ethelberta reinvents herself to disguise her humble origins, launching a brilliant career as a society poet in London with her family acting incognito as her servants. Turning the male-dominated literary world to her advantage, she happily exploits the attentions of four very different suitors. Will she bestow her hand upon the richest of them, or on the man she loves? Ethelberta Petherwin, alias Berta Chickerel, moves with easy grace between her multiple identities, cleverly managing a tissue of lies to aid her meteoric rise. In The Hand of Ethelberta (1876), Hardy drew on conventions of popular romances, illustrated weeklies, plays, fashion plates and even his wife's diary in this comic story of a woman in control of her destiny.

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.

Part of a collection of volumes containing all of Hardy's poetic works, this book contains, in addition to the major poem known as "The Dynasts", Hardy's versions of two folk-pieces: the "Mummers' Play of Saint George" and the operetta "O'Jan, O'Jan, O'Jan" (here published for the first time).

A collection of over 350 letters, many previously unpublished, written between January 1926 and December 1927 and mainly concerned with Thomas Hardy's work and career with annotations, cross-references, a chronology and indexes.

Covering the years 1920-1925, this sixth volume in the collected letters of Thomas Hardy was a Winner of the Thomas Hardy Society Book Prize.

Winner of the Thomas Hardy Society Book Prize.

Textual Introduction - Editorial Symbols - Literary Notes 2 - Literary Notes 3 - Appendix: Introductory Note to the 1867 Notebook - The '1867' Notebook - Notes - Index

Jude Fawley is a rural stone mason with intellectual aspirations. Frustrated by poverty and the indifference of the academic institutions at the University of Christminster, his only chance of fulfilment seems to lie in his relationship with his unconventional cousin, Sue Bridehead.

Winner of the Thomas Hardy Society Book Prize.

Winner of the Thomas Hardy Society Book Prize.

D H Lawrence remarked that Hardy's best novels were about 'the struggle into love and the struggle with love', and THE MAJOR OF CASTLEBRIDGE is no exception.

Hardy's last novel is the story of a young working man destroyed by the partial fulfilment of his dreams. He is torn between his desires for the life of the body and the life of the mind, as represented by two women - the vulgar but lustrous Arabella and the refined and frigid Sue.

Bathsheba Everdene is a strong, confident woman who becomes a powerful farmer. But her emotional life descends into chaos as she becomes involved with three very different men.

A portrayal of a picturesque rural society, tinged with gentle humour and irony, it is Hardy's most bright, confident and optimistic novel.

TWO ON A TOWER (1882) is a tale of star-crossed love in which Hardy sets the emotional lives of his two lovers against the background of the stellar universe. The unhappily married Lady Constantine breaks all the rules of social decorum when she falls in love with Swithin St. Cleeve, an astronomer who is ten years her junior. Her husband's death leaves the lovers free to marry, but the discovery of a legacy forces them apart. This is Hardy's most complete treatment of the theme of love across the class and age divide and the fullest expression of his fascination with science and astronomy.

Distringuished as both a great novelist and a great poet. Thomas Hardy (1840-1928) had a writing career which spanned more than sixty years, concentrating first on prose and then, after publishing his last novel in 1895, on verse.

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Anne Garland, who lives with her widowed mother in a mill owned by Miller Loveday, has three suitors: the local squire's nephew Festus and the miller's two sons, Robert and John. While Festus' aggressive pursuit deters the young woman from considering him as a husband, the indecisive Anne wavers between light-hearted Bob and gentle, steadfast John. But as their Wessex village prepares for possible invasion by Napoleon's fleet, all find their destinies increasingly tangled with the events of history. The Loveday brothers, one a sailor and one a soldier, must wrestle with their commitments to their country and their feelings for Anne. Lyrical and light-hearted, yet shot through with irony, The Trumpet-Major (1880) is one of Hardy's most unusual novels and a fascinating tale of love and desire.

Jude Fawley, the stonemason excluded not by his wits but by poverty from the world of Christminster privilege, finds fulfilment in his relationship with Sue Bridehead. Both have left earlier marriages. Ironically, when tragedy tests their union it is Sue, the modern emancipated woman, who proves unequal to the challenge. Hardy's fearless exploration of sexual and social relationships and his prophetic critique of marriage scandalised the late Victorian establishment and marked the end of his career as a novelist.

"e;See if she is dark or fair, and if you can, notice if her hands be white; if not, see if they look as though she had ever done housework, or are milker's hands like mine."e;So Rhoda Brook, the abandoned mistress of Farmer Lodge, is jealous to discover details of his new bride in 'The Withered Arm', the title story in this selection of Hardy's finest short stories. Hardy's first story, 'Destiny and a Blue Cloak' was written fresh from the success of Far From the Madding Crowd. Beautiful in their own right, these stories are also testing-grounds for the novels in their controversial sexual politics, their refusal of romance structures, and their elegiac pursuit of past, lost loves. Several of the stories in The Withered Arm were collected to form the famous volume, Wessex Tales (1888), the first time Hardy denoted 'Wessex' to describe his fictional world. The Withered Arm is the first of a new two-volume selection of Hardy's short stories, edited with an introduction and notes by Kristin Brady.

Both major novelist and major poet, with a distinctive off-beat and intensely personal style, Hardy is a modern poet born out of his time. This is a collection of some of his finest works.

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.

This work comprises a collection of the poetic works of Thomas Hardy. Hardy's poetry spanned over 50 years from the last half of the 19th century to the period after World War I, and ranges from pessimistic works to those which were witty and fanciful.

The novel is set in Wessex during the Napoleonic Wars. It interweaves a romantic love story of the rivalry of two brothers for the hand of the heroine Anne Garland. It also contains elements of sadness and even tragedy.

The central figure of this novel is the returning "native", Clym Yeobright, and his love for the beautiful but capricious Eustacia Vye.