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...

InThe Pursuit of the Well-Beloved(1892) andThe Well-Beloved(1897), Hardy writes two different versions of a strange story set in the weird landscape of Portland.The central figure is a man obsessed both with the search for his ideal woman and with sculpting the perfect figure of a naked Aphrodite. The pursuit finally fixes on three women called Avice Caro grandmother, mother and daughter in a way that mixes tragedy and high farce.
The books were written one before and one after his "last" novel, Jude the Obscure(1895). Both stories are richly ambiguous but the first...

Thomas Hardy abandoned the novel form at the turn of the century, probably after public reaction toJude the Obscure, but continued to write verse displaying a wide variety of metrical styles and stanza forms and a broad scope of tone and attitude. This definitive volume contains selections from his numerous collections published between 1898 and 1928.
For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history...

Thomas Hardy's "Studies, Specimens &c." notebook, dating from the mid-1860s, preserves unique evidence of the studies of other writers and the self-assigned exercises in vocabulary-building and poetic techniques by which he so deliberately sought to make himself into a poet at the very beginning of his literary career. This edition presents the manuscript in quasi-facsimile, with full annotation of Hardy's sources, allusions, and intentions, as far as they can be interpreted.

Winner of the Thomas Hardy Society Book Prize.

Winner of the Thomas Hardy Society Book Prize.

Winner of the Thomas Hardy Society Book Prize.

From reviews of previous volumes "Has the qualities that a great edition should have: it is meticulously thorough and accurate, and its aids to the reader are clear and comprehensive."--Times Literary Supplement. "An indispensable work of scholarship."--Nineteenth-Century Fiction. The correspondents in this volume range widely--from Edmund Gosse and Walter de la Mare to Ezra Pound--and the letters show an aging Hardy still deeply involved in all aspects of his professional life The nearly 700 letters, most of which have never been published, are supplemented by scrupulous annotation and...

This seventh and final volume of the definitive edition of Thomas Hardy's letters contains more than 350 letters, most never before published, written during the last two years of Hardy's life. In addition to the usual scrupulous annotation and extensive cross-referencing, chronology, and recipient index, this final volume contains a number of earlier letters that became available too late to be included in earlier editions and a General Index covering texts and annotations found throughout the series.

Volumes IV and V of the Complete Poetical Works of Thomas Hardy, which complete the edition, contain all of his dramatic works in verse. In addition to the two major dramas--The Dynasts and The Famous Tragedy of the Queen of Cornwall--these volumes include Hardy's versions of two folk-pieces and the rustic operetta "O Jan, O Jan, O Jan" (here published for the first time).