Thomas Hardy, página 5 de 28

Here you will find the complete novels of Thomas Hardy in the chronological order of their original publication.- Desperate Remedies- Under the Greenwood Tree- A Pair of Blue Eyes- Far from the Madding Crowd- The Hand of Ethelberta- The Return of the Native- The Trumpet-Major- A Laodicean: a Story of To-day- Two on a Tower- The Romantic Adventures of a Milkmaid- The Mayor of Casterbridge- The Woodlanders- Tess of the dUrbervilles- Lifes Little Ironies- Jude the ObscureIncludes Bonus two short stories- The Great English Short-Story Writers, Vol. 1- The Three Strangers

Two On A Tower is a tale of star-crossed love in which Hardy sets the emotional lives of his two lovers against the background of the stellar universe. The unhappily married Lady Constantine breaks all the rules of social decorum when she falls in love with Swithin St. Cleeve, an astronomer who is eight years her junior. Her husbands death leaves the lovers free to marry, but the discovery of a legacy forces them apart. This is Hardys most complete treatment of the theme of love across the class and age divide and the fullest expression of his fascination with science and astronomy.

Here you will find the complete novels of Thomas Hardy in the chronological order of their original publication.- Desperate Remedies- Under the Greenwood Tree- A Pair of Blue Eyes- Far from the Madding Crowd- The Hand of Ethelberta- The Return of the Native- The Trumpet-Major- A Laodicean: a Story of To-day- Two on a Tower- The Romantic Adventures of a Milkmaid- The Mayor of Casterbridge- The Woodlanders- Tess of the dUrbervilles- Lifes Little Ironies- Jude the ObscureIncludes Bonus two short stories- The Great English Short-Story Writers, Vol. 1- The Three Strangers

This is the annotated edition including a rare biographical essay on the life and works of the author.The reader of Mr. Hardys novel, "The Trumpet Major," will at once ask himself, "Is not this author making a brave struggle against the scepticism, the pessimism that have been assailing him? Will not the optimism of the poet and idealist finally conquer the pessimism of the realist?" If Mr. Hardy had died after writing "The Trumpet Major" the last question might well have been answered in the affirmative. Few more charming, spontaneous, wholesome stories than this have ever been written by an English novelist. Sweet Anne Garland may well be set by Sweet Anne Page, and her two devoted swains, fickle Bob Loveday, the sailor, and staunch John Loveday, the Trumpet Major, are worthy to live as long as the language in which their adventures are told. This is the only one of Mr. Hardys stories that at all claims the titlethe great title in spite of some modern criticsof an historical romance. The scene is laid on the southern coast of England during the exciting days of Napoleons contemplated invasion. The historical setting is worthy of all praiseindeed, as we shall see later, Mr. Hardy shares with Thackeray the power to move as freely in the past as in the present. We consider "The Trumpet Major" to be the most charming of Mr. Hardys stories, and if all its characters had possessed the nobility of the unselfish hero and if its action had been more tense and pitched upon a higher plane it would easily have been his greatest work. As it is, it is one of the cleanest, most interesting, most wholesome stories that can be recommended to readers old or young.

This is the annotated edition including a rare biographical essay on the life and works of the author.Some regard this book as Hardys masterpiece. Here again we have a rural setting and a powerful and moving plot. The characters, too, are striking and well drawn, and one of them, Clym Yeobright, the hero, just misses greatness. Unlike Mr. Hardys previous works, it is predominantly a tragedy; but it is not a thoroughly artistic success, because our pleasure at the artists triumph is overbalanced by disagreeable sensations caused by the repulsiveness of many of his characters and of the environment in which they move. Mr. Hardy himself must have felt the effect of this repulsiveness, for his humor is almost entirely absent. A passion for excessive realism, too, has taken a greater hold upon this essentially poetic idealist, and it is only when he is in the presence of inanimate nature that his soul appears to be truly inspired. The descriptions of Egdon Heath in this novel, and of the effects of its sombre vastness upon its scattered inhabitants, are unequalled in modern fiction. But if nature has taken hold of Mr. Hardy as it has done of few men since Wordsworth, it has not disturbed him "with the joy of elevated thoughts," as Wordsworth sang; it has not proved itself to be the power "whose secret is not joy, but peace" of Matthew Arnold; but rather it has proved itself to be the mysterious, inscrutable counterpart in the world of the senses, of that "insoluble enigma" with which Herbert Spencer and so many modern minds have found themselves confronted in the world of thought.

Like " Tess of the DUrbervilles," the story of "Jude the Obscure" is a manifestation of the authors later mannera manner which is a natural and almost inevitable development in a writer who possesses Mr. Hardys extraordinary capacity for observation, profound knowledge of human nature, and philosophical ideas concerning the problem of existence. Mr. Hardy has never been an author to write novels merely for the purpose of providing entertainment, or for illustrating in more or less persuasive form some preconceived didactic proposition. He has been content to take men and women as they are, and no one in English fictionpossibly no one in the whole range of modern literaturehas been able to surpass him in depicting the reaction of circumstances upon character. In this carefully reasoned, closely woven narrative of " Jude the Obscure" he sets before us the entirely natural and consistent experiences of two sensitive and impulsive creatures, who have been profoundly and disastrously affected by the changes in popular thought regarding ideals of religious faith and personal conduct; who, yielding to their thoroughly undisciplined emotions, work out for themselves a destiny full of bitterness and sorrow. It has been said that Mr. Hardy is not a writer to work on preconceived theories,but he certainly has some effective doctrines regarding the behavior of the two sexes under similar conditions, and when one comes to analyze this story one finds that a settled conviction underlies its entire texture, and this conviction is that misfortunes and disappointments, which soften the heart of man and tend to make him more considerate and charitable in his dealings with his fellows, have as a rule a contrary effect upon the heart of a woman.

This is the annotated edition including a rare biographical essay on the life and works of the author.This romance, as the author entitled it in the English edition, is in some respects a successful, and in all respects, a powerful book. It is not devoid of humor, as the delightful description of the choir practice amply proves. It is certainly a romance if a strange and almost bizarre plot can give a story as claim to that title. It does not yield to any of our authors stories as a character study, nor does it yield to any story of modern times in its absolute truth to the fundamental principles of human nature under certain given circumstances. More than any of Mr. Hardys novels it gives one the impression of being a study undertaken on definite lines and with a definite object. That object is the endeavor to show the misery that must come to the woman who allows her passion for a man to blind her to the obstacles which difference of age, of rank, of education, of social aim, have set between them. The absorbing, the disastrous passion of Lady Constantine for her young astronomer, Swithin St. Cleve, the secret marriage, the terrible complications that arise upon her discovery that she was not a widow when she contracted this marriage, her anxiety to do no wrong to the budding genius of her boy husband, who still finds more to gaze at in the stars of heaven than in her own love-lit eyes, her open marriage to the Bishop of Melchester to save her reputation, the awakening of St. Cleve to the fact that there are other women in the world besides his quondam wife and patroness, and finally the death scene in the tower when the heart of her that loved not wisely, but too well, has snapped beneath its weight of griefall these particulars make up a story of intense power and interest.

This is the annotated edition including a rare biographical essay on the life and works of the author.The scenes of Hardys novel are located chiefly on "The Isle of Stingers," South Wessex, and the story deals with the emotional experiences of Jocelyn Pierston, a sculptor and native of the isle. Pierston is condemned by his mental constitution to pursue through life his ideal of woman, a curiously capricious, protean creature, who never tarries long in the same human form. The sculptor is, he declares, always faithful to his Well-Beloved, but she has so many embodiments that he produces the effect of extreme volatility. She is "a spirit, a dream, a frenzy, a conception, an aroma, an epitomized sex." She is never in two places at the same time, but she is never in one place long. She has a habit of appearing in a fresh incarnation at the most inconvenient seasons. In the first book, for instance, just as Pierston has promised marriage to Avice Caro, an island girl who is, like himself, of the old stock there, and whom he respects largely because she does not embody the Well-Beloved, the latter lady turns up in the person of Marcia Bencomb, and the sculptor deserts Avice abruptly and returns to London. He does not marry Marcia, but goes on making capital out of his emotions by translating his unattainable dream into plaster, winning popularity thereby. When he comes back to the island, after twenty years, he finds the creature of his visions in the daughter of Avice, and would marry her if he could.

This is the annotated edition including a rare biographical essay on the life and works of the author.This book has made Mr. Hardy one of the most prominent English novelist. The power and the movement of the story are so great that it is only when we read a review of it that we are conscious that its author had any purpose save that which is common to every true writer of fictionviz.: to tell a story which shall please. But this unconsciousness of a novelists purpose is the highest tribute that can be paid to his work.Tess, the milkmaid heroine, has fallen from virtue through no fault of her own. Subsequently her great passion for a second and nobler lover sweeps her into a marriage with him after she has failed to tell him of her condition, although she has attempted to do so. Her confession of her secret to her husband is one of the most powerful and painful scenes in all literature. After the weak man has deserted her, she undergoes in patience a life of unspeakable torture, but at last falls again to her former betrayer in order to keep her mother and her family from starvation. Her husband returns to her, and in her remorse she stabs her betrayer to death. After a brief period of ecstatic bliss with the now repentant man, whose desertion has brought her to such a pass, she is seized by the officers of the law and led to the scaffold....

This is the annotated edition including a rare biographical essay on the life and works of the author."Under the Greenwood Tree" is a year-long rural idyl. The nine chapters of the first part entitled "Winter," are taken up with a wonderfully humorous description of the old-fashioned wind-instrument choir of the parish of Mellstock trudging around on Christmas night to serenade every dweller in the parish, and with an equally humorous description of the party given by honest Reuben Dewey, the tranter, or wagoner. The other parts, named after the other seasons, commemorate the love of Dick Dewey, the tranters son for Fancy Day, the village schoolmistressa love which ends in the most typical of rural weddings, in spite of the fact that the young rector himself is somewhat smitten with the fair schoolmistress who plays the first organ set up in the parish church. The despair of the old choir at the advent of this organ and their visit to the rector in expostulation are described with a humor that puts Mr. Hardy alongside of Dickens if not, as some think, above him.

This is the annotated edition including a rare biographical essay on the life and works of the author.This compilation of Thomas Hardys short stories is one of the most complete on the book market. Every single story was tracked down and integrated into this book. Hours of enjoyable reading lies ahead of you because Hardy was a real genius among the English fiction writers.From the contents:A Changed ManThe Waiting SupperAlicias DiaryThe Grave By The HandpostEnter A DragoonA Tryst At An Ancient Earth WorkWhat The Shepherd Saw: A Tale Of Four Moonlight NightsA Committee-Man Of The TerrorMaster John Horseleigh, KnightThe Dukes ReappearanceA Family TraditionA Mere InterludeThe First Countess Of WessexBarbara Of The House Of GrebeThe Marchioness Of StonehengeLady MottisfontThe Lady IcenwaySquire Petricks LadyAnna, Lady BaxbyThe Lady PenelopeThe Duchess Of HamptonshireThe Honourable LauraThe Sons VetoFor Conscience SakeA Tragedy Of Two AmbitionsOn The Western CircuitTo Please His WifeThe Melancholy Hussar Of The German LegionThe Fiddler Of The ReelsA Tradition Of Eighteen Hundred And FourA Few Crusted CharactersTony Kytes, The Arch-DeceiverThe History Of The HardcomesThe Superstitious Mans StoryAndrey Satchel And The Parson And ClerkOld Andreys Experience As A MusicianAbsent-Mindedness In A Parish ChoirThe Winters And The PalmleysIncident In The Life Of Mr. George CrookhillNetty Sargents CopyholdAn Imaginative WomanThe Three Strangers... and many more ...

Tess dei D''Uberville non e generalmente una lettura scolastica, ma tanto per cambiare, si potrebbe anche adottarlo come testo scolastico giusto per avere una panoramica diversa dell''universo dei classici. E questo infatti e un libro che racchiude in se tutti gli elementi che ne fanno un bellissimo classico. Leggerlo e come vedere un film, perche l''autore non ha di certo lesinato le descrizioni dei personaggi con i loro lati un po'' oscuri e ambivalenti, tanto che in certi punti non sappiamo se pensare che Tess in effetti e stata troppo ingenua o ha volutamente sbagliato o se il fantomatico cugino Alex sia veramente innamorato o semplicemente un seduttore, o se i genitori di Tess siano ingenui e disperati o approfittatori della disponibilit e del senso di colpa di Tess. Fa da sfondo uno spettacolare paesaggio agreste ben descritto e realistico, sembra quasi di vederlo e che sia un personaggio integrante del romanzo. Riguardo il finale penso che non poteva che finire nella tragedia e anzi da il grosso scossone finale al triangolo creato tra Tess, Alex e... Non voglio anticipare altro.