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...

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 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...

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,...

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...