One of a selection of Thomas Hardy's best-known novels published with introductions by critics, notes, a bibliography, a map of Hardy's Wessex, a chronology of his life, and the New Wessex Ed
Because of its sexual frankness and indictment of Victorian hypocrisy, Hardy's novel was considered shocking when it was published in 1891. It is the tale of Tess Durbeyfield, a young country girl whose rape by Alec D'Urberville, a distant aristocratic relative, leads to pregnancy. Tess's baby dies, and she finds work as a dairymaid at a farm where no one knows her story. From that point, her life, which includes marriage with a man, Angel Clare, who fails to realize her worth, enters a downward spiral, culminating in the sensational tragedy that is at the heart of the book. The cynical and sophisticated Alec's seduction of a country girl, and the self-righteous Angel's destructive idealization of her, can be seen as symbols of the city's ruthless exploitation of the English countryside--a common theme in Hardy's fiction. His compassionate portrait of a young countrywoman was also characteristic of his writing, which never failed to champion the cause of rural lives and values against those of the corrupting city.
Bajo el título de El brazo marchito y otros cuentos tenebrosos, se han agrupado siete piezas breves que desvelan los elementos obsesivos que subyacen en toda la obra de Hardy: la muerte como fuerza activa que atraviesa toda la existencia, la fatalidad e impunidad del azar como fuerza incontrolable, la maldad y la tortura y, sobre todo, la percepción de que bajo la superficie del orden moral e histórico de nuestra civilización persisten las huellas de las antiguas mitologías paganas. En Cita en una fortaleza antigua y en El anfiteatro de Maumbury, Hardy evoca los fantasmas de hordas de guerreros megalíticos e invasores romanos. En El violinista de las contradanzas se adivina la presencia de Pan y de Orfeo en la Inglaterra de la época de la Gran Exposición. En El brazo marchito los elementos tenebrosos y sobrenaturales son transmitidos por medio de la vieja sabiduría druídica. La tumba junto al poste expresa de manera magnífica las oscuras fuerzas del destino.
This is the story of a young country workman obsessed by his ambition to become an Oxford student, interwoven with his fraught relationships with two women.
Thomas Hardy, born 1840, went to the architects lesson to London and began his work apart as a church restorer to write. From 1871 Publications (Wessex novels). The author died in 1928; he left behind an extensive works - except for novels including almost 1,000 poems.
A new selection of Hardy's love poems. Thomas Hardy is one of the sacred figures in English writing, a novelist with a world reputation, but above all a great poet.
