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  • Published: 15 March 2015
  • ISBN: 9780345803986
  • Imprint: Knopf US
  • Format: Trade Paperback
  • Pages: 480
  • RRP: $19.99

Tess of the D'Urbervilles




The new paperback series: Penguin English Library

One of Thomas Hardy’s most famous novels is the story of an innocent young woman victimized by the double standards of her day.

Set in the magical Wessex landscape so familiar from Hardy’s early work, Tess of the d’Urbervilles is unique among his great novels for the intense feeling that he lavished upon his heroine, Tess, a pure woman betrayed by love. Hardy poured all of his profound empathy for both humanity and the rhythms of natural life into this story of her beauty, goodness, and tragic fate. In so doing, he created a character who, like Emma Bovary and Anna Karenina, has achieved classic stature.
 

  • Published: 15 March 2015
  • ISBN: 9780345803986
  • Imprint: Knopf US
  • Format: Trade Paperback
  • Pages: 480
  • RRP: $19.99

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About the author

Thomas Hardy

Thomas Hardy was born on 2 June 1840. His father was a stonemason. He was brought up near Dorchester and trained as an architect. In 1868 his work took him to St Juliot's church in Cornwall where he met his wife-to-be, Emma. His first novel, The Poor Man and the Lady, was rejected by publishers but Desperate Remedies was published in 1871 and this was rapidly followed by Under the Greenwood Tree (1872), A Pair of Blue Eyes (1873) and Far from the Madding Crowd (1874). He also wrote many other novels, poems and short stories. Tess of the D'Urbervilles was published in 1891. His final novel was Jude the Obscure (1895). Hardy was awarded the Order of Merit in 1920 and the gold medal of the Royal Society of Literature in 1912. His wife died in 1912 and he later married his secretary. Thomas Hardy died 11 January 1928.

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Praise for Tess of the D'Urbervilles

“[Tess of the D’Urbervilles is] Hardy’s finest, most complex and most notorious novel . . . The novel is not a mere plea for compassion for the eternal victim, though that is the banner it flies. It also involves a profound questioning of contemporary morality.” –from the Introduction by Patricia Ingham