
Tess of the d'Urbervilles by Thomas Hardy
Tess Durbeyfield, an innocent village girl, is seduced by a wealthy rake, Alec D'Urberville. Though he makes her pregnant she does not love him and and leaves him to return to her home in disgrace. Some time after the baby's death Tess meets her true love Angel Clare, but they cannot escape the consequences of the past. An unforgettably powerful tragedy, Tess of the D'Urbervilles is one of the great classics of the late nineteenth century. This edition contains the illustrations by Sir Hubert von Herkomer and Joseph Syddall from the Graphic, in which Tess of the d'Urbervilles was serialised. With an Afterword by Sam Gilpin.
Thomas Hardy was born in Dorset in 1840, the eldest of four children. At the age of sixteen he became an apprentice architect. With remarkable self discipline he developed his classical education by studying between the hours of four and eight in the morning. With encouragement from Horace Moule of Queens' College Cambridge, he began to write fiction. His first published novel was Desperate Remedies in 1871. Thus began a series of increasingly dark novels all set within the rural landscape of his native Dorset, called Wessex in the novels. Such was the success of his early novels, including A Pair of Blue Eyes (1873) and Far From the Madding Crowd (1874), that he gave up his work as an architect to concentrate on his writing. However he had difficulty in getting Tess of the D'Urbervilles (1889) published and was forced to make changes in order for it to be judged suitable for family readers. This coupled with the stormy reaction to the negative tone of Jude the Obscure (1894) prompted Hardy to abandon novel writing altogether. He concentrated mainly on poetry in his latter years. He died in January 1928 and was buried in Westminster Abbey; but his heart, in a separate casket, was buried in Stinsford, Dorset.
| SKU | Unavailable |
| ISBN 13 | 9781904633105 |
| ISBN 10 | 1904633102 |
| Title | Tess of the d'Urbervilles |
| Author | Thomas Hardy |
| Condition | Unavailable |
| Binding Type | Hardback |
| Publisher | Pan Macmillan |
| Year published | 2003-09-01 |
| Number of pages | 576 |
| Cover note | Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary. |
| Note | Unavailable |