Thomas Hardy

"Set in the magical Wessex landscape so familiar from Thomas Hardy's early work, Tess of the D'Urbervilles is unique among his great novels for the intense feeling that he lavished upon his heroine, Tess, a pure woman betrayed by love. Hardy poured all of his profound empathy for both humanity and the rhythms of natural life into this story of her beauty, goodness, and tragic fate. In so doing, he created a character who, like Emma Bovary and Anna...

This updated authoritative edition of the classic Hardy novel, which was published anonymously and first attributed to George Eliot, is set from Hardy's revised, unedited final draft of 1912 and features a new Introduction and Afterword. There is in England no more real or typical district than Thomas Hardy's imaginary Wessex, the scattered fields and farms of which were first discovered in Far from the Madding Crowd. It is here that Gabriel Oak observes...

A poor peddler, John Durbeyfield learns he is related to an ancient noble family: the d'Urbervilles. To gain part of the fortune, he sends his eldest daughter, Tess, to the d'Urberville mansion. But the relationship is not as it seems, and she ends up working as a servant. The wealthy family's son, Alec d'Urberville, tries to seduce Tess and eventually rapes her. Left pregnant, Tess returns home to have the baby, but the baby dies. Later, Tess falls...

This edition presents a critically established text based on comparisons of every revised version. Hardy placed this tale among his Novels of Character and Environment, a group which is held to include his most characteristic work.

After the hostile reception of Jude the Obscure in 1896, Thomas Hardy devoted the last thirty years of his life to poetry. This generous selection of poems displays the wide variety of his metrical styles and stanza forms, as well as the philosophical scope of his work.

Ethelberta Petherwin, aka Berta Chickerel, moves with ease between her multiple identities, cleverly managing a brilliant career as a society poet in London. Her family act as her servants to help her conque the male-dominated literary world. Beautiful, clever, and rational, she soon attracts four very persistent suitors: Mr. Julian, Mr. Neigh, Mr. Ladywell, and Lord Mountclere.

Bathsheba Everdene is courted by three young men: an adventurer, a young farmer who becomes bailiff of the farm she inherits, and a neighboring farmer.