In "A Laodicean" (1881) Mr. Hardy became less spontaneous and charming, although more subtle and, perhaps, more powerful. The heroine, Paula Power, the Laodicean, neither hot nor cold, is a most interesting study in feminine psychology. The three leading male characters—Somerset, the architect, Dare, the adventurer, and Captain de Stancy, the scion of a decayed family—are well drawn.

This Combo Collection (Set of 4 Books) includes All-time Bestseller Books. This anthology contains: Selected Stories of Thomas Hardy A Laodicean : A Story of To-day THE MAYOR of CASTERBRIDGE Far From The Madding Crowd

Working Girls offers a cultural and literary history of telegraphists, typists, shop-girls, and barmaids. It argues that these occupations helped to shape a distinctively new identity for emancipated young women, and explores how authors used this to navigate a precarious literary landscape.

The final book of the Bible, Revelation prophesies the ultimate judgement of mankind in a series of allegorical visions, grisly images and numerological predictions. According to these, empires will fall, the "Beast" will be destroyed and Christ will rule a new Jerusalem. With an introduction by Will Self.

No other major author of the nineteenth century has arguably produced as much critical activity as Thomas Hardy. This timely addition to the Critical Issues series explores the various philosophical views of critics, with close textual analysis of Hardy's novels and with reference to his poetry.

In Revelation Unveiled, Dr. Tim LaHaye, co-author of the best-selling Left Behind series, reveals the scriptural foundation of beloved novels. In this book, LaHaye explains the biblical topics he and Jerry Jenkins explored in Left Behind: The rapture of the church: The Return of Christ The Great Tribulation The Final Battle against Satan and His Hosts The Seven Seals The Antichrist The Seven Trumpets The Seven Bowls of Wrath The Great White Throne The Destruction of Babylon The New Heaven and New Earth Previously titled Revelation Illustrated and Made Plain, this revised and updated, verse-by-verse commentary of the book of Revelation includes numerous charts. With simple and accessible language, Revelation Unveiled will help you better understand the mysterious, final book of the Bible and its implications. Perfect for fans of the Left Behind books and for anyone confused or curious about the book of Revelation.

Focusing on narrative structure, irony, satire and allusion, The Hidden Hardy offers a radical new perspective on Thomas Hardy's novels. Hardy's own accounts of himself and his work have long been seen as calculated impostures; it is argued here that the same qualities are not only present in his novels, but are critical factors in the way they are made. The respectable and acceptable surfaces are the impostures, masking hidden texts which are extremely hostile to established social, economic and cultural structures.

Explores Thomas Hardy's engagement with Victorian legal debates in his prose fiction. Thomas Hardy's fiction is examined in this book in the context of the seismic legal reforms of the nineteenth century as well as legal discourse in the literature of the era. The book examines the ways in which Hardy's role as a magistrate and his interest in the law impacted fundamentally on his prose fiction. It demonstrates that throughout his prose fiction Hardy engages with contentious legal issues that were debated by legal professionals and literary figures of his day, and argues that Hardy used fiction as a forum to question the extent to which legal reform improved the lives of women and the working classes.The study also looks at the ways in which Hardy deployed criminal plots derived from sensation fiction and reveals that the genre's engagement with legal reform influenced not only his sensation novel Desperate Remedies (1871) but also the plots of his subsequent fiction.