Bøker av Thomas Hardy

Distringuished as both a great novelist and a great poet. Thomas Hardy (1840-1928) had a writing career which spanned more than sixty years, concentrating first on prose and then, after publishing his last novel in 1895, on verse.

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Anne Garland, who lives with her widowed mother in a mill owned by Miller Loveday, has three suitors: the local squire's nephew Festus and the miller's two sons, Robert and John. While Festus' aggressive pursuit deters the young woman from considering him as a husband, the indecisive Anne wavers between light-hearted Bob and gentle, steadfast John. But as their Wessex village prepares for possible invasion by Napoleon's fleet, all find their destinies increasingly tangled with the events of history. The Loveday brothers, one a sailor and one a soldier, must wrestle with their commitments to their country and their feelings for Anne. Lyrical and light-hearted, yet shot through with irony, The Trumpet-Major (1880) is one of Hardy's most unusual novels and a fascinating tale of love and desire.

Jude Fawley, the stonemason excluded not by his wits but by poverty from the world of Christminster privilege, finds fulfilment in his relationship with Sue Bridehead. Both have left earlier marriages. Ironically, when tragedy tests their union it is Sue, the modern emancipated woman, who proves unequal to the challenge. Hardy's fearless exploration of sexual and social relationships and his prophetic critique of marriage scandalised the late Victorian establishment and marked the end of his career as a novelist.

"e;See if she is dark or fair, and if you can, notice if her hands be white; if not, see if they look as though she had ever done housework, or are milker's hands like mine."e;So Rhoda Brook, the abandoned mistress of Farmer Lodge, is jealous to discover details of his new bride in 'The Withered Arm', the title story in this selection of Hardy's finest short stories. Hardy's first story, 'Destiny and a Blue Cloak' was written fresh from the success of Far From the Madding Crowd. Beautiful in their own right, these stories are also testing-grounds for the novels in their controversial sexual politics, their refusal of romance structures, and their elegiac pursuit of past, lost loves. Several of the stories in The Withered Arm were collected to form the famous volume, Wessex Tales (1888), the first time Hardy denoted 'Wessex' to describe his fictional world. The Withered Arm is the first of a new two-volume selection of Hardy's short stories, edited with an introduction and notes by Kristin Brady.

The arrival of two newcomers in the quiet village of Mellstock arouses a bitter feud and leaves a convoluted love affair in its wake. While the Reverend Maybold creates a furore among the village's musicians with his decision to abolish the church's traditional 'string choir' and replace it with a modern mechanical organ, the new schoolteacher, Fancy Day, causes an upheaval of a more romantic nature, winning the hearts of three very different men - a local farmer, a church musician and Maybold himself. Under the Greenwood Tree follows the ensuing maze of intrigue and passion with gentle humour and sympathy, deftly evoking the richness of village life, yet tinged with melancholy for a rural world that Hardy saw fast disappearing.

This work comprises a collection of the poetic works of Thomas Hardy. Hardy's poetry spanned over 50 years from the last half of the 19th century to the period after World War I, and ranges from pessimistic works to those which were witty and fanciful.

The novel is set in Wessex during the Napoleonic Wars. It interweaves a romantic love story of the rivalry of two brothers for the hand of the heroine Anne Garland. It also contains elements of sadness and even tragedy.

The central figure of this novel is the returning "native", Clym Yeobright, and his love for the beautiful but capricious Eustacia Vye.

Set in the heart of the Wessex, this book charts the rise and downfall of a single 'man of character'. It's moving and contrived narrative is Shakespearian in its force, and features some of the author's episodes and passages of description.

When country-girl Grace Melbury returns home from her middle-class school she feels she has risen above her suitor, the simple woodsman Giles Winterborne. Though marriage had been discussed between her and Giles, Grace finds herself captivated by Dr Edred Fitzpiers, a sophisticated newcomer to the area - a relationship that is encouraged by her socially ambitious father. Hardy's novel of betrayal, disillusionment and moral compromise depicts a secluded community coming to terms with the disastrous impact of outside influences. And in his portrayal of Giles Winterborne, Hardy shows a man who responds deeply to the forces of the natural world, thought they ultimately betray him.

When Elfrise Swanston meets Stephen Smith she is attracted to his handsome face, gentle bearing and the sense of mystery which surrounds him. Although distressed to find that the mystery consists only in the humbleness of his origins, she remains true to their youthful vows. But societal pressures, and the advent of the superior Henry Knight, eventually displace her affections. Knight, however, proves to be an uncompromising moralist who, obsessed with fears about Elfride's sexual past, destroys her happiness.Writing of the struggle between classes and sexes, Hardy drew heavily on his own relationships, and in the introduction, Pamela Dalziel discovers fascinating parallels between Hardy's life and his art.

Hardy described Desperate Remedies as a tale of 'mystery, entanglement, surprise and moral obliquity'.Cytherea has taken a position as lady's maid to the eccentric arch-intriguer Miss Aldclyffe. On discovering that the man she loves, Edward Springrove, is already engaged to his cousin, Cytherea comes under the influence of Miss Aldclyffe's fascinating, manipulative steward Manston. Blackmail, murder and romance are among the ingredients of Hardy's first published novel, and in it he draws blithely on the 'sensation novel' perfected by Wilkie Collins. Several perceptive critics praised the author as a novelist with a future when Desperate Remedies appeared anonymously in 1871. In its depiction of country life and insight into psychology and sexuality it already bears the unmistakable imprint of Hardy's genius.

Educated beyond her station, Grace Melbury returns to the woodland village of little Hintock and cannot marry her intended, Giles Winterborne. Her alternative choice proves disastrous.

Introduction and Notes by Michael Irwin, Professor of English Literature, University of Kent at Canterbury.Set in Hardy's Wessex, Tess is a moving novel of hypocrisy and double standards. Its challenging sub-title, A Pure Woman, infuriated critics when the book was first published in 1891, and it was condemned as immoral and pessimistic.It tells of Tess Durbeyfield, the daughter of a poor and dissipated villager, who learns that she may be descended from the ancient family of d'Urbeville. In her search for respectability her fortunes fluctuate wildly, and the story assumes the proportions of a Greek tragedy. It explores Tess's relationships with two very different men, her struggle against the social mores of the rural Victorian world which she inhabits and the hypocrisy of the age.In addressing the double standards of the time, Hardy's masterly evocation of a world which we have lost, provides one of the most compelling stories in the canon of English literature, whose appeal today defies the judgement of Hardy's contemporary critics.

In a fit of drunken anger, Michael Henchard sells his wife and baby daughter for five guineas at a country fair. Over the course of the following years, he manages to establish himself as a respected and prosperous pillar of the community of Casterbridge, but behind his success there always lurk the shameful secret of his past and a personality prone to self-destructive pride and temper. Subtitled 'A Story of a Man of Character', Hardy's powerful and sympathetic study of the heroic but deeply flawed Henchard is also an intensely dramatic work, tragically played out against the vivid backdrop of a close-knit Dorsetshire town.

Rich with biographical echoes, this novel reveals the emergence of the schematic ironies which characterise the author's later works

Wessex Tales was the first collection of Hardy's short stories, and they reflect the experience of a novelist at the height of his powers.

Volumes 4 and 5 of this complete collection of Hardy's poetry contain all of his dramatic writing in verse. Explanatory notes describe each work's composition and publication, and provide supporting material from Hardy's letters and notebooks. Production and performance details are also included.

Although best remembered for his novels, Thomas Hardy thought of himself as a poet forced by circumstance to write fiction for a living. This selection of nearly two hundred poems includes pieces, such as "During Wind and Rain", "Channel Firing", "Afterwards", "The Darkling Thrush", "The Oxen", "To Lizbie Browne", and others.

The Melancholy Hussar/ A Tragedy of Two Ambitions/ The First Countess of Wessex/ Barbara of the House of Grebe/ For Conscience' Sake/ The Son's Veto/ On the Western Circuit/ An Imaginative Woman/ A Changed Man/ Enter a Dragoon The 11 short storiesin this collection range from those with the Wessex setting familiar from Hardy's novels, to aristocratic historical fantasies set in the 17th and 18th centuries, and tragic or ironic contemporary dramas. Enormously readable in their own right, thestories can also be seen as a rich testing ground for ideas and themes that receive more sustained treatment in Hardy's most innovative and controversial novels.

The darkly passionate short stories of Thomas Hardy are compelling explorations of love, social class, superstition and legend. This collection contains many of his finest and most representative, and includes 'The Withered Arm', an eerie depiction of arcane witchcraft in nineteenth-century England; 'Barbara of the House of Grebe', in which a beautiful man's tragic disfigurement by fire is savagely exploited by his rival; 'The Son's Veto', showing the cruelty of an educated youth towards his ignorant but tender mother; and 'The Distracted Preacher', the story of one man's conflict between heartfelt love and his own sense of moral and civic duty. By turns moving and poetic, and surprisingly modern and brutally macabre, these eloquent tales may be numbered among the greatest creations of Hardy's genius.

Wild passion leads to tragedy as love is perverted by marriage. But the concerns of mortals are belittled by the sombre, immemorial presence of Egdon Heath, perhaps Hardy's finest evocation of his native landscape. The text is accompanied by a critical introduction.