- Published: 1 May 2010
- ISBN: 9781407015569
- Imprint: Vintage Digital
- Format: EBook
- Pages: 480
Tess of the D'Urbervilles
Hardy's shocking and deeply moving novel about the one and only Tess of the D'urbervilles
‘Thomas Hardy's thrilling story of seduction, murder, cruelty and betrayal’ The Times
Tess is an innocent young girl until the day she goes to visit her rich 'relatives', the D'Urbervilles. Her encounter with her manipulative cousin, Alec, leads her onto a path that is beset with suffering and betrayal.
When she falls in love with another man, Angel Clare, Tess sees a potential escape from her past, but only if she can tell him her shameful secret...
- Published: 1 May 2010
- ISBN: 9781407015569
- Imprint: Vintage Digital
- Format: EBook
- Pages: 480
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About the author
Thomas Hardy was born in a cottage in Higher Bockhampton, near Dorchester, on 2 June 1840. He was educated locally and at sixteen was articled to a Dorchester architect, John Hicks. In 1862 he moved to London and found employment with another architect, Arthur Blomfield. He now began to write poetry and published an essay. By 1867 he had returned to Dorset to work as Hicks's assistant and began his first (unpublished) novel, The Poor Man and the Lady.
On an architectural visit to St Juliot in Cornwall in 1870 he met his first wife, Emma Gifford. Before their marriage in 1874 he had published four novels and was earning his living as a writer. More novels followed and in 1878 the Hardys moved from Dorset to the London literary scene. But in 1885, after building his house at Max Gate near Dorchester, Hardy again returned to Dorset. He then produced most of his major novels: The Mayor of Casterbridge (1886), The Woodlanders (1887), Tess of the D'Urbervilles (1891), The Pursuit of the Well-Beloved (1892) and Jude the Obscure (1895). Amidst the controversy caused by Jude the Obscure, he turned to the poetry he had been writing all his life. In the next thirty years he published over nine hundred poems and his epic drama in verse, The Dynasts.
After a long and bitter estrangement, Emma Hardy died at Max Gate in 1912. Paradoxically, the event triggered some of Hardy's finest love poetry. In 1914, however, he married Florence Dugdale, a close friend for several years. In 1910 he had been awarded the Order of Merit and was recognized, even revered, as the major literary figure of the time. He died on 11 January 1928. His ashes were buried in Westminster Abbey and his heart at Stinsford in Dorset.
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Praise for Tess of the D'Urbervilles
Hardy never used his "country" and his Greek ambitions to better effect
Melvyn Bragg
Like the greatest characters in literature, Tess lives beyond the final pages of the book as a permanent citizen of the imagination... Tess is that rare creature in literature: goodness made interesting
Irving Howe
Tess's beauty and the effect that it has on others gave me a sense of the destructive power of sex
Rufus Wainwright
There's something about Hardy especially that appeals to the melancholic girl
Belle de Jour
Thomas Hardy's Tess of the D'Urbervilles has a lush sensuality about the heat of summer and the heat of lust which makes the gorgeousness of Hardy's heroine and his country of Wessex both seems utterly desirable as the tale of tragic fate unfolds
The Times
Thomas Hardy's thrilling story of seduction, murder, cruelty and betrayal
The Times
