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husband's death she soon lost the little artificial tastes she had acquired from him, and became--in her son's eyes--a mother whose mistakes and origin it was his painful lot as a gentleman to blush for. As yet he was far from being man enough--if he ever would be--to rate these sins of hers at their true infinitesimal value beside the yearning fondness that welled up and remained penned in her heart till it should be more fully accepted by him, or by some other person or thing. If he had lived at home with her he would have had all of it; but he seemed to require so very little in present circumstances, and it remained stored.

Her life became insupportably dreary; she could not take walks, and had no interest in going for drives, or, indeed, in travelling anywhere. Nearly two years passed without an event, and still she looked on that suburban road, thinking of the village in which she had been born, and whither she would have gone back--O how gladly!--even to work in the fields.

Taking no exe

a handsome man of twenty-eight or thirty, with anattractive hint of wickedness in his manner that was sure to make himadorable with good young women. The large dark eyes that lit hispale face expressed this wickedness strongly, though such was theadaptability of their rays that one could think they might haveexpressed sadness or seriousness just as readily, if he had had amind for such.

An old and deaf lady who was present asked Captain Maumbry bluntly:'What's this we hear about you? They say your regiment is haunted.'

The Captain's face assumed an aspect of grave, even sad, concern.'Yes,' he replied, 'it is too true.'

Some younger ladies smiled till they saw how serious he looked, whenthey looked serious likewise.

'Really?' said the old lady.

'Yes. We naturally don't wish to say much about it.'

'No, no; of course not. But--how haunted?'

'Well; the--THING, as I'll call it, follows us. In country quartersor town, abroad or at home, it's just the same.'

'How do you account

d when writing the present tale, the gratuities received yearly by the musicians at Christmas were somewhat as follows: From the manor-house ten shillings and a supper; from the vicar ten shillings; from the farmers five shillings each; from each cottage-household one shilling; amounting altogether to not more than ten shillings a head annually--just enough, as an old executant told me, to pay for their fiddle-strings, repairs, rosin, and music-paper (which they mostly ruled themselves). Their music in those days was all in their own manuscript, copied in the evenings after work, and their music-books were home-bound.

It was customary to inscribe a few jigs, reels, horn-pipes, and ballads in the same book, by beginning it at the other end, the insertions being continued from front and back till sacred and secular met together in the middle, often with bizarre effect, the words of some of the songs exhibiting that ancient and broad humour which our grandfathers, and possibly grandmothers, took delight i

during winter darkness, tempests, and mists. Then Egdon was aroused to reciprocity; for the storm was its lover, and the wind its friend. Then it became the home of strange phantoms; and it was found to be the hitherto unrecognized original of those wild regions of obscurity which are vaguely felt to be compassing us about in midnight dreams of flight and disaster, and are never thought of after the dream till revived by scenes like this.

It was at present a place perfectly accordant with man's nature--neither ghastly, hateful, nor ugly; neither commonplace, unmeaning, nor tame; but, like man, slighted and enduring; and withal singularly colossal and mysterious in its swarthy monotony. As with some persons who have long lived apart, solitude seemed to look out of its countenance. It had a lonely face, suggesting tragical possibilities.

This obscure, obsolete, superseded country figures in Domesday. Its condition is recorded therein as that of heathy, furzy, briary wilderness--"Bruaria." Then fol

accustomed to many eyes.

And as each and all of them were warmed without by the sun, so each had a private little sun for her soul to bask in; some dream, some affection, some hobby, at least some remote and distant hope which, though perhaps starving to nothing, still lived on, as hopes will. They were all cheerful, and many of them merry.

They came round by The Pure Drop Inn, and were turning out of the high road to pass through a wicket-gate into the meadows, when one of the women said--

"The Load-a-Lord! Why, Tess Durbeyfield, if there isn't thy father riding hwome in a carriage!"

A young member of the band turned her head at the exclamation. She was a fine and handsome girl--not handsomer than some others, possibly--but her mobile peony mouth and large innocent eyes added eloquence to colour and shape. She wore a red ribbon in her hair, and was the only one of the white company who could boast of such a pronounced adornment. As she looked round Durbeyfield was seen moving alon

Description

Tess of the d’Urbervilles is said to be Thomas Hardy’s fictional masterpiece and is considered to be an important nineteenth century novel. It explores themes of love, sex, class and morality in an aching love story.

It initially appeared in a censored, serialised version in The Graphic in 1891 and was published in a single volume the following year. Early reviews were mixed, partly because of its challenge to Victorian sexual morals—it is now looked upon much more favorably.

Tess Durbeyfield is the oldest child of uneducated peasants who are given the impression that they may have noble blood, as their surname is a corruption of that of an extinct Norman family. When Tess participates in the village May Dance, she meets Angel, who stops to join the dance but notices Tess too late to dance with her. That night, Tess’s father gets too drunk to drive to the market, so she undertakes the journey herself. However, she falls asleep at the reins, and the family’s only horse encounters a speeding wagon and is fatally wounded. Tess feels so guilty over the consequences for the family that she agrees to try to claim kin with a rich widow who lives in a neighbouring town. The story traces Tess’s life through the following years.

The novel has been adapted for the stage, theatre, opera, cinema and television numerous times since its publication.

Description

Grace Melbury, daughter of a rich local wood-trader, has been raised beyond her family through years of expensive education. Coming home, she finds herself pulled between her love for her childhood friend Giles Winterborne, and the allure of the enigmatic Doctor Fitzpiers. Giles and Edgar have their own admirers too, and the backdrop of the bucolic pastures and woodlands of an impressionistic take on south-west England provides the perfect setting for their story.

The Woodlanders was commissioned by Macmillan’s Magazine in 1884, and was serialized and later published as a novel in 1887. The story’s themes of infidelity and less-than-blissful marriage were unusual for the time and drew ire from campaigners, but on its publication it garnered immediate critical acclaim. Thomas Hardy later regarded it as the favorite of his stories, and it’s remained perennially popular as a novel and as a series of adaptations to theatre, opera and film.

Description

Jude the Obscure was first published in its complete form in 1895, just after finishing its serial run in Harper’s Magazine. At the time, its unconventional and somewhat scandalous themes earned it widespread criticism and condemnation. In the 1912 “Wessex Edition,” Hardy appended a postscript to the book’s preface in which he stated that the outrage ultimately abated with no lingering effect other than “completely curing me of further interest in novel-writing.” Indeed, Jude was to be Hardy’s last novel.

The story chronicles the life of Jude Fawley, an orphan boy of unremarkable birth or means, growing up in the small farming village of Marygreen in Hardy’s fictional version of Wessex, England. From an early age, Jude determines to chart the course of his life by the stars of learning and scholarship, but he very quickly discovers just how little interest the society of his time would take in the grand ambitions of a young man of so humble an origin. Without proper guidance and limited resources, his progress is slow and arduous. And when he discovers the existence of his cousin, the charming Sue Bridehead, it is nearly abandoned altogether in favor of an almost obsessive pursuit.

The novel proceeds to trace the lives of Jude and Sue as they become locked in a struggle both against themselves and the conventions of their times. Lofty ideals clash with harsh realities; grand pursuits fall prey to darker aspects of human nature. Characters are complex: at times spiteful, selfish, or self-destructive. Hardy, however, remains very subtle in his portrayal of these tragic figures and their flaws. The effect is to render them convincingly human. Ultimately, Jude is an unhappy tale of unfulfilled promise that is rarely told, and rarely told so well.

Winterborne'S House Had Been Pulled down. On This Account His
Face Had Been Seen But Fitfully In hintock; And He Would Probably
Have Disappeared from The Place Altogether But For His Slight
Business Connection With Melbury, On Whose Premises Giles Kept His
Cider-Making apparatus, Now That He Had No Place Of His Own To
Stow It In. Coming here One Evening on His Way To A Hut Beyond
The Wood Where He Now Slept, He Noticed that The Familiar Brown-
Thatched pinion Of His Paternal Roof Had Vanished from Its Site,
And That The Walls Were Levelled. In present Circumstances He Had
A Feeling for The Spot That Might Have Been Called morbid, And
When He Had Supped in the Hut Aforesaid He Made Use Of The Spare
Hour Before Bedtime To Return To Little Hintock In the Twilight
And Ramble Over The Patch Of Ground On Which He Had First Seen The
Day.

husband's death she soon lost the little artificial tastes she had acquired from him, and became--in her son's eyes--a mother whose mistakes and origin it was his painful lot as a gentleman to blush for. As yet he was far from being man enough--if he ever would be--to rate these sins of hers at their true infinitesimal value beside the yearning fondness that welled up and remained penned in her heart till it should be more fully accepted by him, or by some other person or thing. If he had lived at home with her he would have had all of it; but he seemed to require so very little in present circumstances, and it remained stored.

Her life became insupportably dreary; she could not take walks, and had no interest in going for drives, or, indeed, in travelling anywhere. Nearly two years passed without an event, and still she looked on that suburban road, thinking of the village in which she had been born, and whither she would have gone back--O how gladly!--even to work in the fields.

Taking no exe

a handsome man of twenty-eight or thirty, with anattractive hint of wickedness in his manner that was sure to make himadorable with good young women. The large dark eyes that lit hispale face expressed this wickedness strongly, though such was theadaptability of their rays that one could think they might haveexpressed sadness or seriousness just as readily, if he had had amind for such.

An old and deaf lady who was present asked Captain Maumbry bluntly:'What's this we hear about you? They say your regiment is haunted.'

The Captain's face assumed an aspect of grave, even sad, concern.'Yes,' he replied, 'it is too true.'

Some younger ladies smiled till they saw how serious he looked, whenthey looked serious likewise.

'Really?' said the old lady.

'Yes. We naturally don't wish to say much about it.'

'No, no; of course not. But--how haunted?'

'Well; the--THING, as I'll call it, follows us. In country quartersor town, abroad or at home, it's just the same.'

'How do you account

d when writing the present tale, the gratuities received yearly by the musicians at Christmas were somewhat as follows: From the manor-house ten shillings and a supper; from the vicar ten shillings; from the farmers five shillings each; from each cottage-household one shilling; amounting altogether to not more than ten shillings a head annually--just enough, as an old executant told me, to pay for their fiddle-strings, repairs, rosin, and music-paper (which they mostly ruled themselves). Their music in those days was all in their own manuscript, copied in the evenings after work, and their music-books were home-bound.

It was customary to inscribe a few jigs, reels, horn-pipes, and ballads in the same book, by beginning it at the other end, the insertions being continued from front and back till sacred and secular met together in the middle, often with bizarre effect, the words of some of the songs exhibiting that ancient and broad humour which our grandfathers, and possibly grandmothers, took delight i

during winter darkness, tempests, and mists. Then Egdon was aroused to reciprocity; for the storm was its lover, and the wind its friend. Then it became the home of strange phantoms; and it was found to be the hitherto unrecognized original of those wild regions of obscurity which are vaguely felt to be compassing us about in midnight dreams of flight and disaster, and are never thought of after the dream till revived by scenes like this.

It was at present a place perfectly accordant with man's nature--neither ghastly, hateful, nor ugly; neither commonplace, unmeaning, nor tame; but, like man, slighted and enduring; and withal singularly colossal and mysterious in its swarthy monotony. As with some persons who have long lived apart, solitude seemed to look out of its countenance. It had a lonely face, suggesting tragical possibilities.

This obscure, obsolete, superseded country figures in Domesday. Its condition is recorded therein as that of heathy, furzy, briary wilderness--"Bruaria." Then fol

accustomed to many eyes.

And as each and all of them were warmed without by the sun, so each had a private little sun for her soul to bask in; some dream, some affection, some hobby, at least some remote and distant hope which, though perhaps starving to nothing, still lived on, as hopes will. They were all cheerful, and many of them merry.

They came round by The Pure Drop Inn, and were turning out of the high road to pass through a wicket-gate into the meadows, when one of the women said--

"The Load-a-Lord! Why, Tess Durbeyfield, if there isn't thy father riding hwome in a carriage!"

A young member of the band turned her head at the exclamation. She was a fine and handsome girl--not handsomer than some others, possibly--but her mobile peony mouth and large innocent eyes added eloquence to colour and shape. She wore a red ribbon in her hair, and was the only one of the white company who could boast of such a pronounced adornment. As she looked round Durbeyfield was seen moving alon

Description

Tess of the d’Urbervilles is said to be Thomas Hardy’s fictional masterpiece and is considered to be an important nineteenth century novel. It explores themes of love, sex, class and morality in an aching love story.

It initially appeared in a censored, serialised version in The Graphic in 1891 and was published in a single volume the following year. Early reviews were mixed, partly because of its challenge to Victorian sexual morals—it is now looked upon much more favorably.

Tess Durbeyfield is the oldest child of uneducated peasants who are given the impression that they may have noble blood, as their surname is a corruption of that of an extinct Norman family. When Tess participates in the village May Dance, she meets Angel, who stops to join the dance but notices Tess too late to dance with her. That night, Tess’s father gets too drunk to drive to the market, so she undertakes the journey herself. However, she falls asleep at the reins, and the family’s only horse encounters a speeding wagon and is fatally wounded. Tess feels so guilty over the consequences for the family that she agrees to try to claim kin with a rich widow who lives in a neighbouring town. The story traces Tess’s life through the following years.

The novel has been adapted for the stage, theatre, opera, cinema and television numerous times since its publication.

Description

Grace Melbury, daughter of a rich local wood-trader, has been raised beyond her family through years of expensive education. Coming home, she finds herself pulled between her love for her childhood friend Giles Winterborne, and the allure of the enigmatic Doctor Fitzpiers. Giles and Edgar have their own admirers too, and the backdrop of the bucolic pastures and woodlands of an impressionistic take on south-west England provides the perfect setting for their story.

The Woodlanders was commissioned by Macmillan’s Magazine in 1884, and was serialized and later published as a novel in 1887. The story’s themes of infidelity and less-than-blissful marriage were unusual for the time and drew ire from campaigners, but on its publication it garnered immediate critical acclaim. Thomas Hardy later regarded it as the favorite of his stories, and it’s remained perennially popular as a novel and as a series of adaptations to theatre, opera and film.

Description

Jude the Obscure was first published in its complete form in 1895, just after finishing its serial run in Harper’s Magazine. At the time, its unconventional and somewhat scandalous themes earned it widespread criticism and condemnation. In the 1912 “Wessex Edition,” Hardy appended a postscript to the book’s preface in which he stated that the outrage ultimately abated with no lingering effect other than “completely curing me of further interest in novel-writing.” Indeed, Jude was to be Hardy’s last novel.

The story chronicles the life of Jude Fawley, an orphan boy of unremarkable birth or means, growing up in the small farming village of Marygreen in Hardy’s fictional version of Wessex, England. From an early age, Jude determines to chart the course of his life by the stars of learning and scholarship, but he very quickly discovers just how little interest the society of his time would take in the grand ambitions of a young man of so humble an origin. Without proper guidance and limited resources, his progress is slow and arduous. And when he discovers the existence of his cousin, the charming Sue Bridehead, it is nearly abandoned altogether in favor of an almost obsessive pursuit.

The novel proceeds to trace the lives of Jude and Sue as they become locked in a struggle both against themselves and the conventions of their times. Lofty ideals clash with harsh realities; grand pursuits fall prey to darker aspects of human nature. Characters are complex: at times spiteful, selfish, or self-destructive. Hardy, however, remains very subtle in his portrayal of these tragic figures and their flaws. The effect is to render them convincingly human. Ultimately, Jude is an unhappy tale of unfulfilled promise that is rarely told, and rarely told so well.

Winterborne'S House Had Been Pulled down. On This Account His
Face Had Been Seen But Fitfully In hintock; And He Would Probably
Have Disappeared from The Place Altogether But For His Slight
Business Connection With Melbury, On Whose Premises Giles Kept His
Cider-Making apparatus, Now That He Had No Place Of His Own To
Stow It In. Coming here One Evening on His Way To A Hut Beyond
The Wood Where He Now Slept, He Noticed that The Familiar Brown-
Thatched pinion Of His Paternal Roof Had Vanished from Its Site,
And That The Walls Were Levelled. In present Circumstances He Had
A Feeling for The Spot That Might Have Been Called morbid, And
When He Had Supped in the Hut Aforesaid He Made Use Of The Spare
Hour Before Bedtime To Return To Little Hintock In the Twilight
And Ramble Over The Patch Of Ground On Which He Had First Seen The
Day.