Thomas Hardy

Far from the Madding Crowd is Thomas Hardy's fourth novel and his first major literary success. The novel is the first to be set in Hardy's fictional region of Wessex in rural south west England. It deals in themes of love, honour and betrayal, against a backdrop of the seemingly idyllic, but often harsh, realities of a farming community in Victorian England. It describes the farmer Bathsheba Everdene, her life and relationships - especially with her lonely neighbour William Boldwood, the faithful shepherd Gabriel Oak, and the thriftless soldier Sergeant Troy.

The story takes place in a small woodland village called Little Hintock, and concerns the efforts of an honest woodsman, Giles Winterborne, to marry his childhood sweetheart, Grace Melbury. Although they have been informally betrothed for some time, her father has made financial sacrifices to give his adored only child a superior education and no longer considers Giles good enough for her. When the new doctor - a well-born and handsome young man named Edred Fitzpiers - takes an interest in Grace, her father does all he can to make Grace forget Giles, and to encourage what he sees as a brilliant match.

Hardy distrusted the application of nineteenth-century empiricism to history because he felt it marginalized important human elements. In The Trumpet Major, the tale of a woman courted by three competing suitors during the Napoleonic wars, he explores the subversive effects of ordinary human desire and conflicting loyalties on systematized versions of history.

Two on a Tower (1882) is a novel by English author Thomas Hardy, classified by him as a romance and fantasy and now regarded as one of his minor works.

Hardy's masterpiece traces a poor stonemason's ill-fated romance with his free-spirited cousin. No Victorian institution is spared - marriage, religion, education - and the outrage following publication led the embittered author to renounce fiction. Modern critics hail this novel as a pioneering work of feminism and socialist thought.

Far from the Madding Crowd (1874) is Thomas Hardy's fourth novel and his first major literary success. The novel is the first to be set in Hardy's fictional region of Wessex in rural south west England. It deals in themes of love, honour and betrayal, against a backdrop of the seemingly idyllic, but often harsh, realities of a farming community in Victorian England. It describes the farmer Bathsheba Everdene, her life and relationships - especially with her lonely neighbour William Boldwood, the faithful shepherd Gabriel Oak, and the thriftless soldier Sergeant Troy.

The plot concerns the activities of a group of church musicians, the Mellstock parish choir, one of whom, Dick Dewy, becomes romantically entangled with a comely new school mistress, Fancy Day. The novel opens with the fiddlers and singers of the choir--including Dick, his father Reuben Dewy, and grandfather William Dewy--making the rounds in Mellstock village on Christmas Eve. When little band plays at the schoolhouse, young Dick falls for Fancy at first sight. Dick, smitten, seeks to insinuate himself into her life and affections, but Fancy's beauty has gained her other suitors, including a rich farmer and the new vicar at the parish church.

Elfride finds herself caught in a battle between her heart, her mind and the expectations of her parents and society. The novel is notable for the strong parallels to Hardy and his first wife Emma Gifford. When Elfride's father finds that his guest and candidate for his daughter's hand, architect's assistant Stephen Smith, is the son of a mason, he immediately orders him to leave. This was the third of Hardy's novels to be published and the first to bear his name.

Described by Hardy as a tale of "mystery, entanglement, surprise and moral obliquity", his first published novel violated the literary decorum of its day with blackmail, murder, and romance. It relates the story of Cytherea, a maid to the eccentric arch-intriguer Miss Aldclyffe, and the man she loves, Edward Springrove. Upon discovering that Edward is already engaged, Cytherea comes under the influence of Miss Aldclyffe's fascinating, manipulative steward, Manston.

Far from the Madding Crowd was the first of Hardy's novels to apply the name of Wessex to the landscape of south-west England, and the first to gain him widespread popularity as a novelist. When the beautiful and spirited Bathsheba Everdene inherits her own farm, she attracts three very different suitors; the seemingly commonplace man-of-the-soil Gabriel Oak, the dashing young soldier Francis Troy, and the respectable, middle-aged Farmer Boldwood. Her choice, and the tragedy it provokes, lie at the centre of Hardy's ambivalent story.

A dozen minor novels that have been published in the periodical press collected together.

The Mayor of Casterbridge opens with a shocking and haunting scene: In a drunken rage, Michael Henchard sells his wife and daughter to a visiting sailor at a local fair. When they return to Casterbridge some nineteen years later, Henchard-having gained power and success as the mayor-finds he cannot erase the past or the guilt that consumes him. The Mayor of Casterbridge is a rich, psychological novel about a man whose own flaws combine with fate to cause his ruin.

V romane "Vdali ot bezumnoj tolpy" Gardi raskryvaet velikuju i vechnuju dramu otnoshenij muzhchiny i zhenschiny. V svoe vremja jarkaja, neprostaja istorija ljubovnogo treugolnika nezavisimoj i gordoj Batsheby, unasledovavshej fermu v glushi Severnoj Anglii, krestjanina Gabrielja Ouka i "prisheltsa iz gorodskoj tsivilizatsii" serzhanta Troja stala nastojaschim literaturnym skandalom. Chto interesno, roman Gardi po-prezhnemu schitaetsja skandalnym i narushajuschim "osnovy osnov" uzhe nyneshnego obschestva. Tak kak zhe udalos Gardi zatronut struny dushi chitatelej trekh stoletij?..

Thomas Hardy's final novel "Jude the Obscure" began as a serial publication on December 1894 before being published in book form the following year. It is the story of its titular character Jude Fawley, a young lower-class man with dreams of being a scholar, and his relationships with his wife, Arabella, and his free-spirited cousin, Sue Bridehead. The novel follows the life of Jude from his youth living in a village in southern England where he works in a bakery and studies Classical Greek and Latin in his spare time with hopes of one day becoming a scholar at Christminster, a fictional city modeled after Oxford. His dreams are dashed however when he becomes ensnared by deceit into marriage with Arabella Donn, a coarse and superficial girl. What follows is a classic and tragic tale that plays upon many themes, principally of which is the idea that one's ruinous downfall is the product of having lived a sinful life. Having been harshly criticized in its day for its scandalous portrayals, "Jude the Obscure" has since been recognized as one of Hardy's finest and most intricate works. This edition is printed on premium acid-free paper and includes an introduction by Morton Dauwen Zabel.