"O delivery my heart from this fearful gloom and loneliness," prays the passionate Eustacia Vye, who detests her life amid the dreary environs of Egdon Heath. With the return of Clym Yeobright from Paris, her escape for the heath and its brooding isolation appears to be at hand. Clym finds in Eustacia the same dark mystery of his native heath, and his irresistible attraction to them both leads to a clash of idealism and realism.Thomas Hardy's timeless tale of a...
A cruel joke at a country fair goes too far when a drunken laborer auctions off his wife and child to the highest bidder. So begins The Mayor of Casterbridge, Thomas Hardy's gripping tale of a man's rise and fall amid the natural beauty and human brutality of a rural English community.First published serially in 1886, the novel was praised by critics for its realism and poetic style. Most agreed, however, that its plot hinges upon unlikely turns of events. Hardy replied, «It is not...
HarperCollins is proud to present its new range of best-loved, essential classics.‘The movements of his mind seemed to tend to the thought that some power was working against him.’When Henchard, an out-of-work hay-trusser gets drunk and sells his wife at a country fair, his life will never be the same. Eighteen years later, his wife and daughter return to Casterbridge to find that Henchard has become Mayor. Although he’s spent most of his life attempting to repent for his actions, he remains a...
Thomas Hardy (1840-1928), dreamed since his childhood of becoming a poet. However, he produced several popular works that cemented his reputation as a great novelist of the Victorian period, and earned him the admiration of later writers like D. H. Lawrence and Virginia Woolf. Hardy's stories are noted for their nuances of Romantic and Enlightenment thinking, particularly elements of the supernatural. One of what Hardy called his Novels of Ingenuity, «The Hand of Ethelberta» explores the...
HarperCollins is pround to present a range of best-loved, essential classics.'My life looks as if it had been wasted for want of chances! When I see what you know, what you have read, and seen, and thought, I feel what a nothing I am!'Challenging the hypocrisy and social conventions of the rural Victorian world, Tess of the D'Urbervilles follows the story of Tess Durbeyfield as she attempts to escape the poverty of her background, seeking wealth by claiming connection with the aristocratic...
First published serially in 1891 in “The Graphic”, an illustrated British newspaper, “Tess of the d’Urbervilles” is one of the last novels written by Thomas Hardy. It is the titular story of Teresa “Tess” Durbeyfield, the oldest child of John and Joan Durbeyfield. The Durbeyfields are a poor family living in rural England who are led to believe by a local parson that they may actually be related to the d’Urbervilles, a noble Norman family. Trying to capitalize on this knowledge the Durbeyfields...
A level 6 Oxford Bookworms Library graded reader. Retold for Learners of English by Clare West. A pretty young girl has to leave home to make money for her family. She is clever and a good worker; but she is uneducated and does not know the cruel ways of the world. So, when a rich young man says he loves her, she is careful – but not careful enough. He is persuasive, and she is overwhelmed. It is not her fault, but the world says it is. Her young life is already stained by men's desires, and...
A level 2 Oxford Bookworms Library graded readers. Retold for Learners of English by Jennifer Bassett. Tony Kytes is a favourite with the girls but he’s not terribly clever. If you meet an old girlfriend and she asks for a ride home in your wagon, do you say yes? And then if you meet the girl you are planning to marry, what do you do? Very soon, Tony is in a great muddle, and does not know how to escape from it. These stories are set in an English country village of the nineteenth century,...