The Return of the Native may be Thomas Hardy’s finest writing. His descriptive and lyrical powers are at their height, his evocation of the wilds of Egdon Heath unmatched, his dissection of Eustacia and Clym’s marriage uni...

Subtitled A Story of To-day', A Laodicean occupies a unique place in the Thomas Hardy canon. Departing from pre-industrial Wessex, Hardy brings his themes of social constraint, fate, chance and miscommunication to the very modern worl...

Hardy's first major novel tells the story of the shepherd Gabriel Oak and his long, patient devotion to Bathsheba Everdene. Bathsheba's faithless husband is murdered by a neighboring farmer, William Bellwood, who also loves her. At th...

When John Durberyfield discovers a family connection to the ancient Norman family, the d'Urbervilles, the fate of daughter Tess is transformed.

A young man falls victim to his own obsession with an amorous farm girl in Thomas Hardy's classic novel of fate and unrequited love.

Hardy's third novel, A Pair of Blue Eyes , follows the story of Elfride Swancourt. The daughter of the Rector of Endelstow, a sparse sea-swept parish in Cornwall, Elfride is caught between two suitors of very different backgrounds: St...

Jude Fawley is a bright but impoverished stonemason who aspires to attend university and become a scholar. H is failure to fulfill the expectations of the two women he loves points to his final tragedy. Concerned with the destructive ...

The innocent and naïve Jude Fawley is trapped into marriage by the seductive Arabella Donn. But their union is an unhappy one, and Arabella leaves him. Jude's welcome freedom allows him to pursue his obsession with his pretty cousin,...

A ne'er-do-well exploits his gentle daughter's beauty for social advancement in Thomas Hardy's compelling masterpiece of tragic fiction.

In Thomas Hardy's classic novel, an ambitious man discovers that the blind energies and defiant acts that brought him to power can also destroy him.

Selected Short Stories: Thomas Hardy was born in 1840 near Dorchester in that part of England he called Wessex. With stories sometimes from his own imagination and sometimes from local tradition, Hardy's work, like Dickens and Trollop...

One of the most popular of Hardy's novels, this charming pastoral idyll is a lightly humorous depiction of life in an early Victorian rural community. The story delicately balances the concerns of the Mellstock parish choir with a rom...

One of the most popular of Hardy's novels, this charming pastoral idyll is a lightly humorous depiction of life in an early Victorian rural community. The story delicately balances the concerns of the Mellstock parish choir with a rom...