Vor der unheimlichen Heidelandschaft Südenglands entspinnt sich eine Liebe tragischen Ausgangs: Die leidenschaftliche Eustacia Vye sehnt sich danach, der Einöde zu entfliehen, und träumt von einem Leben in den Städten. Als Clym Yeobright, der sich als Diamantenhändler in Paris niedergelassen hat, in seine Heimat zurückkehrt, um seine Mutter zu besuchen, glaubt Eustacia, endlich einen Ausweg gefunden zu haben. Zwar gelingt es ihr, Clym an sich zu binden, doch dieser hat nicht vor, seine Heimat wieder zu verlassen. Ein Wunsch, der nicht ohne Folgen bleiben wird. Eine stürmische...

Das Meisterwerk der englischen Literatur

Kaum ein viktorianischer Roman ist lebendiger und raffinierter als Thomas Hardys Bürgermeister von Casterbridge. Geschildert wird der Aufstieg und selbstverschuldete Niedergang eines einzelnen »Mannes mit Charakter«: Der Heubinder Michael Henchard gibt sich auf einem Volksfest dem Alkohol hin und versteigert seine Frau und seine Tochter an einen Seemann. Erst als er wieder nüchtern wird, erkennt er seinen Fehler und beschließt, keinen Alkohol mehr zu trinken. Im...

Tess Durbeyfield is the oldest child of John and Joan, uneducated peasants living in an impoverished rural village in Wessex, during the Long Depression of the 1870s. One day, her father is given the hint that they may have noble blood and that they are successors of a noble Norman family D'Urberville. Tess's fortune is changed after one accident and she decides to visit Mrs. D'Urberville, a rich widow who lives in the nearby town, and "claim kin". Though now considered a major nineteenth-century English novel and Hardy's masterpiece, Tess of the d'Urbervilles originally received mixed...

Life's Little Ironies is a collection of tales written by Thomas Hardy, originally published in 1894, and republished with a slightly different collection of stories, for the Uniform Edition in 1927/8. There is a Prefatory Note to the revised edition, written by the author, which says this of the above contents: "Of the following collection the first story, 'An Imaginative Woman', originally stood in Wessex Tales, but was brought into this volume as being more nearly its place, turning as it does upon a trick of Nature, so to speak, a physical possibility that may attach to a wife of vivid...

Late Lyrics and Earlier is a compilation of poems by Thomas Hardy. Most of them on the melancholic side, we also get a glimpse of the lyricists later creative stages with a flair of his romantic modernism.

Far from the Madding Crowd tells the story of the farmer Bathsheba Everdene, her life and relationships - especially with her lonely neighbor William Boldwood, the faithful shepherd Gabriel Oak, and the thriftless soldier Sergeant Troy. It is the first of Hardy's novels to be set in a fictional county of Wessex in rural southwest England. The novel deals in themes of love, honor and betrayal, against a backdrop of the seemingly idyllic, but often harsh, realities of a farming community in Victorian England. Thomas Hardy (1840-1928) was an English novelist and poet. A Victorian realist in the...

Thomas Hardy's 'The Return of the Native' is a captivating novel that explores the themes of love, fate, and the complexity of human relationships. Set in the rural landscape of Wessex, the book follows the lives of several characters as they navigate the harsh realities of 19th-century England. Hardy's writing style is characterized by its poetic language and detailed descriptions of nature, adding depth to the novel's rich literary context. The story is filled with vivid imagery and symbolic elements that create a compelling narrative for readers to immerse themselves in. 'The Return of the...

Jude the Obscure tells the story of Jude Fawley, a stonemason who dreams of becoming a scholar, and Sue Bridehead, his cousin and also his central love interest. The novel is concerned in particular with issues of class, education, religion and marriage. Jude is a working-class young man who lives in a village in southern England who yearns to be a scholar at "Christminster", a city modelled on Oxford. As a youth, Jude teaches himself Classical Greek and Latin in his spare time, while working in his great-aunt's bakery, with the hope of entering university. After a failed marriage, Jude moves...

A rose-colored view of romance and a mismatched marriage all serve to show how tragic a false view of life can be. In this novel, Eustacia's determination to marry the man of her dreams has tragic consequences for others.

"Jude im Dunkeln" von Thomas Hardy ist ein subtiles Meisterwerk, das die existenziellen Konflikte und sozialen Schranken im viktorianischen England beleuchtet. Der Roman schildert die tragische Geschichte des talentierten, aber gesellschaftlich diskriminierten Juden Fawley, dessen Sehnsucht nach akademischer Bildung und persönlichem Glück immer wieder an den restriktiven Konventionen seiner Zeit scheitert. Hardys unerschütterliche Darstellung sozialer Ungerechtigkeit, gepaart mit seinem realistischen und symbolträchtigen Stil, positioniert das Werk als beeindruckenden literarischen...