"Far from the madding crowd" (1874) is Thomas Hardy's fourth novel and his first major literary success. Gabriel Oak is a young shepherd. With the savings of a...

"Jude the Obscure" is the last novel published by Thomas Hardy in 1895. This work is considered a heretic (a copy of the book was burned in public by the bishop of...

In Desperate Remedies a young woman, Cytherea Graye, is forced by poverty to accept a post as lady's maid to the eccentric Miss Aldclyffe, the woman whom her father had loved...

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 ten years her junior. Her...

This story of the Mellstock Quire and its old established west-gallery musicians, with some supplementary descriptions of similar officials in Two on a Tower, A Few Crusted...

The novel tells the story of Jude Fawley, who lives in a village in the southern English region of Wessex who yearns to be a scholar. As a youth, Jude teaches himself Greek and...

Milkmaid Rhoda Brooks cannot control her jealousy of Gertrude - a beautiful woman who has just married a rich farmer. So when Gertrude appears in her dream she cannot help but...

"The Melancholy Hussar of the German Legion" is a short story by Thomas Hardy that follows the encounter between a young woman and a homesick soldier. The sparks of passion...

Gabriel Oak is a young shepherd. With the savings of a frugal life, and a loan, he has leased and stocked a sheep-farm. He falls in love with a newcomer eight years his junior,...

The Return of the Native is one of Hardy's most popular novels pioneering such themes as sexual politics, thwarted desire, and the conflicting demands of nature and society, a...