Paula Power, the daughter of a wealthy railway magnate, inherits De Stancy Castle, an ancient castle in need of modernization. She commissions a young architect from London, George Somerset, to undertake the work. Somerset falls in love with Paula. But Paula, the Laodicean of the title, meaning a person who is lukewarm or halfhearted, is torn between George’s admiration and that of Captain De Stancy, whose old-world romanticism contrasts with Somerset’s forward-looking outlook.

Paula’s vacillation in her romantic life is also reflected in her views about religion, politics, and social progress, a dilemma faced by people in the Victorian era as industrialization was beginning to greatly change their lives. Paula will have to decide between the two men, however, or risk losing them both.

Gabriel Oak is only one of three suitors for the hand of the beautiful and spirited Bathsheba Everdene. He must compete with the dashing young soldier Sergeant Troy and the respectable, middle-aged Farmer Boldwood. And while their fates depend upon the choice Bathsheba makes, she discovers the terrible consequences of an inconstant heart.
Far from the Madding Crowd was the first of Hardy’s novels to give the name Wessex to the landscape of southwest England and the first to gain him widespread popularity as a novelist. Set against the backdrop of the unchanging natural cycle of the year, the story both upholds and questions rural values with a startlingly modern sensibility.

Gabriel Oak is a shepherd struggling to get ahead when Bathsheba Everdene moves next door. Although he loves her, she sees him as a friend and rejects him for two other suitors. After she leaves town, she and Gabriel are reunited years later, once everything has changed. In this classic novel, Thomas Hardy depicts the English countryside as idyllic but also hard and unforgiving, much like the Victorian mindsets of the day.

Far from the Madding Crowd by Thomas Hardy Gabriel Oak is a young shepherd. With the savings of a frugal life, and a loan, he has leased and stocked a sheep-farm. He falls in love with a newcomer eight years his junior, Bathsheba Everdene, a proud beauty who arrives to live with her aunt, Mrs. Hurst. She comes to like him well enough, and even saves his life once, but when he makes her an unadorned offer of marriage, she refuses; she values her independence too much and him too little. Gabriel’s blunt protestations only serve to drive her to haughtiness. After a few months, she moves to Weatherbury, a village some miles off. When next they meet, their circumstances have changed drastically. An inexperienced new sheep dog drives Gabriel’s flock over a cliff, ruining him. After selling off everything of value, he manages to settle all his debts, but emerges penniless. He seeks employment at a work fair in the town of Casterbridge (a fictionalised version of Dorchester). When he finds none, he heads to another fair in Shottsford, a town about ten miles from Weatherbury. On the way, he happens upon a dangerous fire on a farm and leads the bystanders in putting it out. When the veiled owner comes to thank him, he asks if she needs a shepherd. She uncovers her face and reveals herself to be none other than Bathsheba. She has recently inherited the estate of her uncle and is now a wealthy woman. Though somewhat uncomfortable, she hires him. Meanwhile, Bathsheba has a new admirer: the lonely and repressed William Boldwood. Boldwood is a prosperous farmer of about forty whose ardour Bathsheba unwittingly awakens when – her curiosity piqued because he has never bestowed on her the customary admiring glance – she playfully sends him a valentine sealed with red wax on which she has embossed the words “Marry me”. Boldwood, not realising the valentine was a jest, becomes obsessed with Bathsheba, and soon proposes marriage. Although she does not love him, she toys with the idea of accepting his offer; he is, after all, the most eligible bachelor in the district. However, she postpones giving him a definite answer. When Gabriel rebukes her for her thoughtlessness, she fires him. When her sheep begin dying from bloat, she discovers to her chagrin that Gabriel is the only man who knows how to cure them. Her pride delays the inevitable, but finally she is forced to beg him for help. Afterwards, she offers him back his job and their friendship is restored.

This story of a proud rural beauty and the three men who court her is the novel that first made Thomas Hardy famous.

Despite the violent ends of several of its major characters, Far from the Madding Crowd is the sunniest and least brooding of Hardy’s great novels. The strong-minded Bathsheba Everdene—and the devoted shepherd, obsessed farmer, and dashing soldier who vie for her favor—move through a beautifully realized late nineteenth-century agrarian landscape, still almost untouched by the industrial revolution and the encroachment of modern life.

When the great Thomas Hardy published this heart-wrenching novel, he had no idea it would be his last. But the book stirred so much controversy and protest, Hardy vowed to never write fiction again. Jude the Obscure tells the story of a stonemason, tricked into a loveless marriage, who craves a formal education and a finer existence. Separated from his wife, Jude begins a new life with his cousin, and the couple defies social convention at every turn.

Jude Fawley is a stone mason with a passion for scholarship who longs to study at the nearby university town of Christminster. Then Arabella Donn comes into his life. His longing for her eclipses all else for a time, and they marry but unhappily. Meeting his spirited and intelligent cousin, Sue Bridehead, Jude dares to dream again. But in acknowledging their feelings for one another, Jude and Sue risk becoming social outcasts. In defying conventional morality, their lives become plagued by uncertainty and torment.

His last and most controversial novel, Jude the Obscure provoked such widespread and bitter attacks that Hardy claimed it caused him to stop writing novels. The primary causes of the uproar involved Hardy’s frank treatment of sexual themes and his unconventional portrayal of the pillars of Victorian society: the British university system, marriage, and religion. Today, many consider this to be Hardy’s finest work.

The story involves the tragic relationship between Jude Fawley, a village stonemason who is thwarted in his aspirations to the ministry, and Sue Bridehead, a freethinking cousin who is shunned by society for her social and sexual rebellion. Concerned with the annihilation of innocence, Jude the Obscure is powerful in its portrayal of suffering, rich in its evocation of nature, and tragic in its vision of life.

Tess Durbeyfield, a peasant girl and cast-off descendant of English aristocracy, has become one of the most famous female protagonists in 19th-century British literature. Betrayed by the two men in her life-Alec D’Urberville, her seducer/rapist and father of her fated child; and Angel, her intellectual and pious husband-Tess takes justice, and her own destiny, into her delicate hands. In telling her desperate and passionate story, Hardy brings Tess to life with an extraordinary vividness that makes her live in the heart of the reader long after the novel is concluded.

Young Tess Durbeyfield attempts to restore her family’s fortunes by claiming their connection with the aristocratic d’Urbervilles. But Alec d’Urberville is a rich wastrel who seduces her and makes her life miserable. When Tess meets Angel Clare, she is offered true love and happiness, but her past catches up with her and she faces an agonizing moral choice.
Thomas Hardy’s indictment of society’s double standards, and his depiction of Tess as “a pure woman,” caused controversy in his day and has held the imagination of readers ever since. Hardy thought it his finest novel and Tess the most deeply felt character he ever created.

Thomas Hardy’s Tess of the d’Urbervilles received mixed reviews upon its publication in 1891-1892 for its frank discussion of female sexuality and the hypocrisy of Victorian morality. Set in Wessex (a fictional part of southwestern England that is the setting for many of Hardy’s novels), Tess Durbeyfield is the impoverished eldest daughter of uneducated peasants. Throughout the story she navigates a world of desire and romance made complicated by her social status. Considered by some to be his Masterpiece, Hardy’s themes and imagery describe the corrosive effect of industrialization on the natural world and especially poor country folk.

Thomas Hardy’s novel of seduction and abandonment introduced his most memorable tragic heroine, the unworldly maiden Tess. On her morning journey to earn money for her impoverished family, Tess’ horse has an accident, forcing her to seek assistance from some newly rich relatives. There, she is vigorously pursued by Alec, who corners her in a field one night and takes advantage of her. After bearing a child who quickly dies, Tess meets and falls in love with Angel, a minister’s son who is infatuated with the image of Tess as the pure country maid. But when he learns the truth of her past, he shuns his new bride and leaves Tess once again to fend for herself in a world where she is only valued for her uses to others.

Explanatory Note to the First Edition of Tess of the D’Urbervilles:

“In respect of the book’s opinions and sentiments, I would ask any too genteel reader, who cannot endure to have said what everybody nowadays thinks and feels, to remember a well-worn sentence of St. Jerome’s: If an offence come out of the truth, better is it that the offence come than that the truth be concealed.”

Thomas Hardy, November 1891

This collection includes two of the most notable titles from author Thomas Hardy, Tess of the d’Urbervilles and Far from the Madding Crowd. Tess Durbeyfield, the daughter of an impoverished family, must navigate a world of desire and romance once she meets Alec d’Urberville. The son of a rich widow, he takes a fancy to her and gets her a position as the poultry keeper on his family’s estate. However, her good fortune is soon complicated by Alec’s libertine ways, and Tess returns home shamed. Once recovered, she separates herself from the gossip by finding work at a dairy farm outside the village. There, she meets and falls for Angel Clare, the eligible youngest son of the local reverend. But as her life begins to change for the better, she is troubled by a moral dilemma: whether or not to tell Angel about her past. Gabriel Oak is a shepherd struggling to get ahead when Bathsheba Everdene moves next door. Although he loves her, she sees him as a friend and rejects him for two other suitors. After she leaves town, she and Gabriel are reunited years later, once everything has changed. In this classic novel, Thomas Hardy depicts the English countryside as idyllic but also hard and unforgiving, much like the Victorian mindsets of the day.

From its astonishing opening scene, in which the drunken Michael Henchard sells his wife and daughter at a country fair, to the breathtaking series of discoveries at its conclusion, The Mayor of Casterbridge claims a unique place among Thomas Hardy’s finest and most powerful novels.

Rooted in an actual case of wife selling in early nineteenth-century England, the story builds into an awesome Sophoclean drama of guilt and revenge, in which the strong, willful Henchard rises to a position of wealth and power, only to achieve a most bitter downfall. Proud, obsessed, ultimately committed to his own destruction, Henchard is, as Albert Guerard has said, “Hardy’s Lord Jim…his only tragic hero and one of the greatest tragic heroes in all fiction.”

One of the great novelists of British literature, Thomas Hardy caused quite a stir when this powerful novel was first published. Michael Henchard, down on his luck and drunk, sells his wife and child to a sailor for five guineas. As time goes by, Henchard becomes Mayor of Casterbridge-but he cannot escape the tragedy of his past.

Set against the backdrop of peaceful southwest England, where Thomas Hardy spent much of his youth, The Mayor of Casterbridge captures the author’s unique genius for depicting the absurdity underlying much of the sorrow and humor in our lives.
Michael Henchard is an out-of-work hay-trusser who gets drunk at a local fair and impulsively sells his wife, Susan, and baby daughter. Eighteen years later, Susan and her daughter seek him out, only to discover that he has become the most prominent man in Casterbridge. Henchard attempts to make amends for his youthful misdeeds, but his unchanged impulsiveness clouds his relationships in love as well as his fortunes in business. Although Henchard is fated to be a modern-day tragic hero, unable to survive in the new commercial world, his story is also a journey toward love.

In the barren moor of Egdon Heath, a wild tract of country in the southwest of England, one native yearns to escape to city life while another has just returned from that life, unimpressed.

Clym Yeobright, a former diamond merchant in Paris, returns home to become a schoolmaster in Egdon, where he falls passionately in love with the sensuous, free-spirited Eustacia Vye. Infatuated with his seeming glamour, she marries him in hopes of greater adventure–but when her hopes are disappointed, she rekindles an affair with Clym’s reckless cousin, Damon.

Injured by forces beyond their control, Hardy’s characters struggle vainly in the net of destiny.In the end, only the face of the lonely heath remains untouched by fate. This masterpiece of tragic passion perfectly epitomizes the author’s melancholy genius.

Virginia Woolf once called Thomas Hardy “the greatest tragic writer among English novelists.” His atmospheric novels were often considered shocking upon their publication. In this classic, Clym Yeobright returns to Egdon Heath from Paris, intending to settle down and improve the lives of his townspeople. But the alluring and mysterious Eustacia Vye has other plans. Like so many of Hardy’s masterpieces, The Return of the Native is both a rich character study and a critical examination of Victorian society.

One of Thomas Hardy’s classic statements about modern love, courtship, and marriage, The Return of the Native is set in the pastoral village of Egdon Heath. The fiery Eustacia Vye, wishing only for passionate love, believes that her escape from Egdon lies in her marriage to Clym Yeobright, the returning “native,” home from Paris and discontented with his work there. Clym wishes to remain in Egdon, however-a desire that sets him in opposition to his wife and brings them both to despair. Surrounding them are Clym’s mother, who is strongly opposed to his marriage; Damon Wildeve, who is in love with Eustacia but married to Clym’s cousin Thomasin; and the oddly ambiguous observer Diggory Venn, whose frustrated love for Thomasin turns him into either a guardian angel or a jealous manipulator-or perhaps both.
This stew of curdled love and conflicting emotions can only boil over into tragedy, and the book’s darkly ironic ending marks it as both a classically Victorian novel and a forerunner of the modernist fiction that followed it.

Set against the larger-than-life backdrop of the Napoleonic wars, Hardy’s only historical novel tells of the loves and sorrows of ordinary people caught in extraordinary times.

When an anticipated invasion brings several regiments to her small rural community, young country maid Anne Garland is courted by three men in uniform: the loyal trumpet-major John Loveday, his sailor-brother Bob, and cowardly Festus Derriman of the yeomanry cavalry.

Founded largely on testimony from elders known to Hardy in his childhood, The Trumpet-Major offers a complex weave of historical fact and fiction that explores the subversive effects of ordinary human desires on systematized versions of history.

Thomas Hardy’s moving story of star-crossed lovers shows human beings at the mercy of forces beyond their control, setting a tragic drama of human passion against a backdrop of space and scientific discovery.

Unhappily married, Lady Constantine defies social standards when she falls in love with the youthful and socially inferior Swithin St. Cleeve. In an ancient monument converted into an astronomical observatory, they isolate themselves from society and create their own private universe–until the pressures of the outside world threaten to tear them apart.

Under the Greenwood Tree is Hardy’s most charming novel using, as it does, the four seasons of the Wessex year as a backdrop for the delightful romance of the young Dick Dewy and Fancy Day, the local school mistress. The story of the ups and downs of their courtship is set alongside the story of the rustics who form the Mellstock church choir and their struggle against the introduction of a church organ which threatens their very existence.

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. Drawn from Hardy’s childhood memories, it represents, he said, “a true picture at first hand of the personages, ways, and customs which were common in the villages.”

The story delicately balances the concerns of the Mellstock parish choir with a romance between Dick Dewy, a member of the choir, and Fancy Day, the village schoolmistress. While the choir battles for its survival against the new vicar’s mechanical church organ, personal conflicts arise over the anachronistic customs of tradition.

Dick Dewy and Fancy Day, the lovers; the simpleton Leaf; Penney the shoemaker; and the rest of the Mellstock rustics inhabit this charming sunlit novel, the first in the great Wessex canon. The book is divided into the four seasons of the year and, like a happily-remembered childhood, a tranquil timelessness and Arcadian appropriateness is established in each.