The Mayor of Casterbridge opens with a shocking and haunting scene: In a drunken rage, Michael Henchard sells his wife and daughter to a visiting sailor at a local fair. When they return to Casterbridge some nineteen years later, Henchard-having gained power and success as the mayor-finds he cannot erase the past or the guilt that consumes him. The Mayor of Casterbridge is a rich, psychological novel about a man whose own flaws combine with fate to cause his ruin.

A vacillating young woman is thrust onto the horns of religious and romantic dilemmas.

Thomas Hardy was an English writer and poet in the Romantic era who was greatly influenced by Charles Dickens and William Wordsworth. His historical fiction is still widely popular today.

Thomas Hardy was an English writer and poet in the Romantic era who was greatly influenced by Charles Dickens and William Wordsworth. His historical fiction is still widely popular today.

Lady Constantine breaks all the rules of social decorum when she falls in love with the beautiful youth Swithin St Cleeve, her social inferior and ten years her junior. The tower in question is a monument converted into an astronomical observatory where together the lovers 'sweep the heavens'. Science and romance are destined to collide, however, as work, ambition and the pressures of the outside world intrude upon the pair.

The Return of the Native and Jude the Obscure, by Thomas Hardy. Two complete unabridged novels in one book.

On an evening in the latter part of May a middle-aged man was walking homeward from Shaston to the village of Marlott, in the adjoining Vale of Blakemore, or Blackmoor. The pair of legs that carried him were rickety, and there was a bias in his gait which inclined him somewhat to the left of a straight line. He occasionally gave a smart nod, as if in confirmation of some opinion, though he was not thinking of anything in particular. An empty egg-basket was slung upon his arm, the nap of his hat was ruffled, a patch being quite worn away at its brim where his thumb came in taking it off....

Jude Fawley, a young man who craves education like others might crave food or drink. Jude decides he wants to go to university and he works toward that goal until at the age of nineteen he is sidelined when the girl he has been courting tells him she is pregnant. Jude marries this girl, but, the pregnancy having been a lie to trap him, the marriage quickly fails and the girl leaves. Jude moves to the university town a short time later and meets his soul mate in his cousin, Sue Bridehead. However, Sue refuses to love him and instead marries another. In time, Sue comes back to Jude, but tragedy...

Jocelyn Pierston pertenece a una de las familias mas importantes de Horada, una isla dedicada a la explotacion de sus canteras. Sin embargo, desea dedicarse al arte y aspira a ser uno de los genios mas reputados de Inglaterra. Romantico empedernido, cree estar bajo los efectos de una maldicion que le impele a perseguir a la amada ideal. Esta atraccion, a la que su voluntad no puede oponerse, sera la causa de su desdicha, y de una extraodinaria historia de amor que abarca cuarenta anos de su vida y que queda reflejada en la relacion que mantendra con tres generaciones de la familia Caro, la...