Set in rural Dorset, Thomas Hardy's 19th-century novel follows Grace Melbury, caught between her timber merchant father's social ambitions and her conflicted feelings for two very different men. This fiction explores class divides and the tension between tradition and progress in a changing English countryside.
The rambler who, for old association or other reasons, should trace the forsaken coach-road running almost in a meridional line from Bristol to the south shore of England, would find himself during the latter half of his journey in the vicinity of some extensive woodlands, interspersed with apple-orchards. Here the trees, timber or fruit-bearing, as the case may be, make the wayside hedges ragged by their drip and shade, stretching over the road with easeful horizontality, as if they found the unsubstantial air an adequate support for their limbs. At one place, where a hill is crossed, the largest of the woods shows itself bisected by the high-way, as the head of thick hair is bisected by the white line of its parting. The spot is lonely. The physiognomy of a deserted highway expresses solitude to a degree that is not reached by mere dales or downs, and bespeaks a tomb-like stillness mor…Continue reading →
A Victorian novelist and poet who captured rural English life with unflinching realism, this master storyteller (1840-1928) created tragic tales of individuals crushed by social conventions and fate. His novels like Tess of the d'Urbervilles and The Mayor of Casterbridge revealed the harsh realities beneath idealized country living, influencing modern literature's psychological depth. All works by Thomas Hardy →
Browse all Fiction · 19th Century works