Thomas Hardy, página 4 de 28

Bathsheba Everdene is young, proud, and beautiful. She is an independent woman and can marry any man she chooses - if she chooses. In fact, she likes her independence, and she likes fighting her own battles in a man's world. But it is never wise to ignore the power of love. There are three men who would very much like to marry Bathsheba. When she falls in love with one of them, she soon wishes she had kept her independence. She learns that love brings misery, pain, and violent passions that can destroy lives ...

Bathsheba Everdene is a beautiful young woman with three men who love her, but, unfortunately for her, she chooses the wrong man to marry. "Penguin Readers" is a series of simplified novels, film novelizations and original titles that introduce students at all levels to the pleasures of reading in English. Originally designed for teaching English as a foreign language, the series' combination of high interest level and low reading age makes it suitable for both English-speaking teenagers with limited reading skills and students of English as a second language. Many titles in the series also provide access to the pre-20th century literature strands of the National Curriculum English Orders. "Penguin Readers" are graded at seven levels of difficulty, from "Easystarts" with a 200-word vocabulary, to Level 6 (Advanced) with a 3000-word vocabulary. In addition, titles fall into one of three sub-categories: "Contemporary", "Classics" or "Originals". At the end of each book there is a section of enjoyable exercises focusing on vocabulary building, comprehension, discussion and writing.Some titles in the series are available with an accompanying audio cassette, or in a book and cassette pack. Additionally, selected titles have free accompanying "Penguin Readers Factsheets" which provide stimulating exercise material for students, as well as suggestions for teachers on how to exploit the Readers in class.

Set in Hardy's Wessex, Tess is a moving novel of hypocrisy and double standards. Its challenging sub-title, A Pure Woman, infuriated critics when the book was first published in 1891, and it was condemned as immoral and pessimistic.It tells of Tess Durbeyfield, the daughter of a poor and dissipated villager, who learns that she may be descended from the ancient family of d'Urbeville. In her search for respectability her fortunes fluctuate wildly, and the story assumes the proportions of a Greek tragedy. It explores Tess's relationships with two very different men, her struggle against the social mores of the rural Victorian world which she inhabits and the hypocrisy of the age.

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.

'"See if she is dark or fair, and if you can, notice if her hands be white; if not, see if they look as though she had ever done housework, or are milker's hands like mine."' So Rhoda Brook, the abandoned mistress of Farmer Lodge, is jealous to discover details of his new bride in 'The Withered Arm', the title story in this selection of Hardy's finest short stories. Hardy's first story, 'Destiny and a Blue Cloak' was written fresh from the success of Far From the Madding Crowd. Beautiful in their own right, these stories are also testing-grounds for the novels in their controversial sexual politics, their refusal of romance structures, and their elegiac pursuit of past, lost loves. Several of the stories in The Withered Arm were collected to form the famous volume, Wessex Tales (1888), the first time Hardy denoted 'Wessex' to describe his fictional world. The Withered Arm is the first of a new two-volume selection of Hardy's short stories, edited with an introduction and notes by Kristin Brady.

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.

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

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 percepcion de que bajo la superficie del orden moral e historico de nuestra civilizacion persisten las huellas de las antiguas mitologias paganas. En Cita en una fortaleza antigua y en El anfiteatro de Maumbury, Hardy evoca los fantasmas de hordas de guerreros megaliticos e invasores romanos. En El violinista de las contradanzas se adivina la presencia de Pan y de Orfeo en la Inglaterra de la epoca de la Gran Exposicion. En El brazo marchito los elementos tenebrosos y sobrenaturales son transmitidos por medio de la vieja sabiduria druidica. La tumba junto al poste expresa de manera magnifica las oscuras fuerzas del destino.

Tempestuous Eustacia Vye passes her days dreaming of passionate love and the escape it may bring from the small community of Egdon Heath. Hearing that Clym Yeobright is to return from Paris, she sets her heart on marrying him, believing that through him she can leave rural life and find fulfilment elsewhere. But she is to be disappointed, for Clym has dreams of his own, and they have little in common with Eustacia's. Their unhappy marriage causes havoc in the lives of those close to them, in particular Damon Wildeve, Eustacia's former lover, Clym's mother and his cousin Thomasin. The Return of the Native illustrates the tragic potential of romantic illusion and how its protagonists fail to recognize their opportunities to control their own destinies.

This tale of an opportunistic yet ultimately loyal adventuress, who begins life humbly and ends as the wife of a rakish aristocrat, will surprise readers of Hardy's more familiar, and darke

«El alcalde de Casterbridge» (1886) es una de las novelas de madurez de Thomas Hardy y, junto con «Jude el oscuro», una de las que cimentan su histórica fama de novelista trágico. «El alcalde de Cast