This is the extended annotated edition including a rare biographical essay on the life and works of the author. The scenes of Hardy's novel are located chiefly on "The Isle of Stingers," South Wessex, and the story deals with the emotional experiences of Jocelyn Pierston, a sculptor and native of the isle. Pierston is condemned by his mental constitution to pursue through life his ideal of woman, a curiously capricious, protean creature, who never tarries long in the same human form. The sculptor is, he declares, always faithful to his Well-Beloved, but she has so many embodiments that he produces the effect of extreme volatility. She is "a spirit, a dream, a frenzy, a conception, an aroma, an epitomized sex." She is never in two places at the same time, but she is never in one place long. She has a habit of appearing in a fresh incarnation at the most inconvenient seasons. In the first book, for instance, just as Pierston has promised marriage to Avice Caro, an island girl who is, like himself, of the old stock there, and whom he respects largely because she does not embody the Well-Beloved, the latter lady turns up in the person of Marcia Bencomb, and the sculptor deserts Avice abruptly and returns to London. He does not marry Marcia, but goes on making capital out of his emotions by translating his unattainable dream into plaster, winning popularity thereby. When he comes back to the island, after twenty years, he finds the creature of his visions in the daughter of Avice, and would marry her if he could.
