Jude the Obscure
Upon its first appearance in 1895, Thomas Hardy’s Jude the Obscure shocked Victorian critics and readers with a frank depiction of sexuality and an unbridled indictment of the institutions of marriage, education, and religion, reportedly causing one Angli-can bishop to order the book publicly burned. The experience so exhausted Hardy that he never wrote a work of fiction again.
Rich in symbolism, Jude the Obscure is the story of Jude Fawley and his struggle to rise from his station as a poor Wessex stonemason to that of a scholar at Christminster. It is also the story of Jude’s ill-fated relationship with his cousin Sue Bridehead, and the ultimate tragedy that causes Jude’s undoing and Sue’s transformation. Jude the Obscure explores man’s…
$7.99
May 7, 2009Thomas Hardy was born on June 2, 1840. In his writing, he immortalized the site of his birth—Egdon Heath, in Dorset, near Dorchester, England. Delicate as a child, he was taught at home by his mother before he attended grammar school. At 16, Hardy was apprenticed to an architect, and for many years, architecture was his profession; in his spare time, he pursued his first and last literary love, poetry. Finally convinced that he could earn his living as an author, he retired from architecture, married, and devoted himself to writing. An extremely productive novelist, Hardy published an important book every year or two. In 1896, disturbed by the public outcry over the unconventional subjects of his two greatest novels—Tess of…
Penguin Readers Level 5: Far from the Madding Crowd
Thomas Hardy
Jude the Obscure
Thomas Hardy; Introduction and Notes by Dennis Taylor; Cover illustrated by Coralie Bickford-Smith
The Mayor of Casterbridge
Thomas Hardy; Edited with an Introduction and Notes by Keith Wilson; Cover illustrated by Coralie Bickford-Smith
The Mayor of Casterbridge
Thomas Hardy
Tess of the D'Ubervilles
Thomas Hardy
Far from the Madding Crowd
Thomas Hardy; Edited with an Introduction and Notes by Rosemarie Morgan with Shannon Russell; Cover illustrated by Coralie Bickford-Smith
Tess of the D'Urbervilles
Thomas Hardy
Hardy: Poems
Thomas Hardy
Penguin Classics Far From the Madding Crowd
Thomas Hardy
Penguin English Library Tess Of The D'urbervilles
Thomas Hardy
Penguin English Library Far From the Madding Crowd
Thomas Hardy
Far From the Madding Crowd
Thomas Hardy