Wessex Tales

by Thomas Hardy

Overview

In Wessex Tales, his first collection of short stories, Hardy sought to record the legends, superstitions, local customs and lore of a Wessex that was rapidly passing out of memory. But these Tales also portray the social and economic stresses of Dorset in the 1880s, and reveal Hardy's growing scepticism about the possiblity of achieving personal and sexual satisfaction in the modern world. By turns humorous, ironic, macabre, and elegiac, these seven stories show the range of Hardy's story-telling gifts.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781522922926
Publisher:	CreateSpace Publishing
Publication date:	12/25/2015
Series:	Immortal Classics
Pages:	162
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.37(d)

About the Author

Thomas Hardy, OM (1840 - 1928) was an English novelist and poet. A Victorian realist in the tradition of George Eliot, he was influenced both in his novels and in his poetry by Romanticism, especially William Wordsworth. Charles Dickens was another important influence. Like Dickens, he was highly critical of much in Victorian society, though Hardy focused more on a declining rural society. While Hardy wrote poetry throughout his life and regarded himself primarily as a poet, his first collection was not published until 1898. Initially, therefore, he gained fame as the author of novels, including Far from the Madding Crowd (1874), The Mayor of Casterbridge (1886), Tess of the d'Urbervilles (1891), and Jude the Obscure (1895). Most of his fictional works - initially published as serials in magazines - were set in the semi-fictional region of Wessex. They explored tragic characters struggling against their passions and social circumstances.

Date of Birth:

June 2, 1840

Date of Death:

January 11, 1928

Place of Birth:

Higher Brockhampon, Dorset, England

Place of Death:

Max Gate, Dorchester, England

Education:

Served as apprentice to architect James Hicks

Table of Contents

Includes:The Three StrangersA Tradition of Eighteen Hundred and FourThe Melancholy Hussar of the German LegionThe Withered Arm; Fellow-TownsmenInterlopers at the KnapThe Distracted Preacher

Editorial Reviews

• "In two minutes only those shops which could boast of no attendant save the master or the mistress remained with open eyes. These were ever somewhat less prompt to exclude customers than the others: for their owners' ears the closing hour had scarcely the cheerfulness that it possessed for the hired servants of the rest."
• "Stockdale, a lonely young fellow, who had for weeks felt a great craving for somebody on whom to throw away superfluous interest, and even tenderness, was not sorry to join her...."

― Thomas Hardy, Wessex Tales

From the Publisher

In Hardy's first collection of short stories he presents the region of Dorset in the 1880s—the lives of its people, as well as their beliefs and superstitions. Narrator Neville Jason beautifully conveys the rich depictions of people and place, including regional and historical speech patterns and characters of varying ages and stations. Romance and family life are often Hardy's focus. Many of the men fall in love with love and propose to many women, or the same one often, only to be repeatedly rebuffed. In one standout story, a married woman falls in love with a poet she's never met, a situation that ends in a double tragedy. In another story, the celebration of a baby's birth is so well rendered that listeners will feel they’re there. S.G.B. © AudioFile 2012, Portland, Maine

AUGUST 2012 - AudioFile