June 2014 Guest Editor Freya North on Thomas Hardy...
For me, no other writer so definitively captures both the beauty and challenges of Britain - its landscape, weather, village life versus city life and of course the class system. But most of all I love the way that landscape is not merely a backdrop in Hardy's writing, but a leading character in it – something that has become a crucial element of my own writing. I love the paintings of Millet – the unpatronizing dignity he imbued his scenes of rustic life. This is so true of Hardy too and nowhere is this more compelling than in Tess of the D’Urbervilles - one of my all time favourite books.
'Wherefore is light given to him that is in misery, and life unto the bitter in soul?'
Jude Fawley, poor and working-class, longs to study at the University of Christminster, but he is rebuffed, and trapped 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.
Hardy's last and most controversial novel, Jude the Obscure caused outrage when it was published in 1895. This is the first truly critical edition, taking account of the changes that Hardy made over twenty-five years. It includes a new chronology and bibliography and substantially revised notes.
ABOUT THE SERIES: For over 100 years Oxford World's Classics has made available the widest range of literature from around the globe. Each affordable volume reflects Oxford's commitment to scholarship, providing the most accurate text plus a wealth of other valuable features, including expert introductions by leading authorities, helpful notes to clarify the text, up-to-date bibliographies for further study, and much more.
'The greatest tragic writer among English novelists -- Virginia Woolf
I was a teenager when I read this book. There was something about Hardy's harsh, fatalistic world that appealed to me then. Despite, or maybe because of, the pessimism, I think I found it rather romantic and I read everything of his that I could lay my hands on. Then I got to Jude. And Jude was just so sad, so unfair, so much about fate shafting a good man in all kinds of ways, that I overdosed on Hardy and could never read him again. But I still remember sitting on my bed and crying my heart out at the injustice of it all. I cried so much my mother came upstairs to check I was all right. I think she was worried about a teenage excess of emotion. Maybe that was what I liked about Hardy all along: you can shamelessly feel as you read him.' REVIEWED BY WILLIAM WAKE (Kirkus UK)
Author
About Thomas Hardy, Patricia Ingham
Thomas Hardy was born in 1840 and wrote both poetry and novels, including The Mayor of Casterbridge, Far from the Madding Crowd, Tess of the D'Urbervilles and Jude the Obscure. He died in 1928.
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