Jude the Obscure by Thomas Hardy

Jude the Obscure by Thomas Hardy

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 to Christminster and supports himself as a mason while studying alone. There, he meets and falls in love with his free-spirited cousin, Sue, who also experiences failed marriage. The couple end up living together and have children, but they are socially ostracized and experience great deal of trouble. Thomas Hardy (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 and Charles Dickens. Like Dickens, he was highly critical of much in Victorian society, though Hardy focused more on a declining rural society. While Hardy regarded himself primarily as a poet, initially he gained fame as the author of novels, including Far from the Madding Crowd, Tess of the d'Urbervilles and Jude the Obscure. Most of his fictional works were set in the semi-fictional region of Wessex. They explored tragic characters struggling against their passions and social circumstances.

Cedric Watts's edition of Jude the Obscure is one of an extremely interesting set of literary works from Broadview Press, distinguished by wise editorial choices and inclusion of a variety of documents contemporary with the worksWatts is one of our era's most resourceful and level-headed analysts of literature, and his introduction richly sketches the angles of several controversies current in Hardy's time. There are numerous selections from writings which influenced Hardy (science, philosophy, poems, the Bible) excerpts from essays and poems from the late nineteenth century, and materials in categories such as divorce, and university education, all of which amplify and add to Watts' comments, and stimulate thinking about Hardy and nineteenth-century subjects, as well as about our own time." - Dale Kramer, University of Oregon.

"This is an informative and scholarly edition of the novel which brings out its explosive nature, why it so scandalised Hardy's contemporaries. Professor Watts provides a clear, lively introduction, helpful notes and a wealth of material on the textual history of Jude the Obscure, its contemporary reception and its intellectual and social context. Readers of Hardy will find it immensely useful." - T.R. Wright, University of Newcastle

"Broadview Press and editor Cedric Watts have done a splendid job." - English Literature in Transition

Cedric Watts is a professor in the English Department at the University of Sussex, and the internationally-renowned author of fifteen critical and scholarly books, including The Deceptive Text; A Preface to Keats; Joseph Conrad: A Literary Life; Literature and Money; and Thomas Hardy: “Jude the Obscure.” As well as being editor of this Broadview edition of Jude the Obscure, he is the editor of Broadview’s edition of Conrad’s Lord Jim.

SKU	Unavailable
ISBN 13	9781551111711
ISBN 10	1551111713
Title	Jude the Obscure
Author	Thomas Hardy
Series	Broadview Editions
Condition	Unavailable
Binding Type	Paperback
Publisher	Broadview Press Ltd
Year published	1999-07-30
Number of pages	520
Cover note	Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary.
Note	Unavailable