A collection of eight critical essays on Thomas Hardy's last major novel, arranged in chronological order of publication.

This Third Norton Critical Edition of Hardy's final novel has been revised to reflect the breadth of responses it has received over the last fifteen years. The text of the novel is again based on Hardy's final revision for the 1912 Wessex Edition.

A study of the fictious world in Hardy’s novels in relation to real places and Hardy’s real-life experiences. Thomas Hardy’s Wessex is one of the great literary evocations of place, populated with colourful and dramatic characters. As lovers of his novels and poetry know, this ‘partly real, partly dream-country’ was firmly rooted in the Dorset into which he had been born. J. B. Bullen explores the relationship between reality and the dream, identifying the places and the settings for Hardy’s writing, and showing how and why he shaped them to serve the needs of his characters and plots. The locations may be natural or man-made, but they are rarely fantastic or imaginary. A few have been destroyed and some moved from their original site, but all of them actually existed, and we can still trace most of them on the ground today. Thomas Hardy: The World of his Novels is essential reading for students of literature and for all Hardy enthusiasts who want to gain new insights into his work. Praise for Thomas Hardy “Take pleasure in a book like this one, which skillfully interweaves its evocative accounts of Hardy’s life, of Dorset and Cornwall places, and of the stories unfolded from places in six of his novels (and a few poems) so that we vividly re-experience them. . . . The pleasures of this book (and they are real) come from its ability to re-enchant us in a way that is not un-Hardy-like, to draw us again into the intensely seen, heard, and felt world of the novels and poems. It set me to re-reading Hardy, with different eyes.” —Review 19

This Third Norton Critical Edition of Hardy’s final novel has been revised to reflect the breadth of responses it has received over the last fifteen years. The text of the novel is again based on Hardy’s final revision for the 1912 Wessex Edition. The Norton Critical Edition also includes: · Expanded footnotes by Ralph Pite, further drawing out Hardy’s web of allusions and comprehensively indicating the material culture in which he embeds this narrative. · A selection of Hardy’s poems—four of them new to the Third Edition—that emphasizes the biographical contexts from which parts of Jude the Obscure arose. · Eighteen critical responses, including eleven modern essays—eight of them new to the Third Edition. Simon Gatrell, Michael Hollington, Elaine Showalter, Victor Luftig, and Mary Jacobus are among the new voices. · A Chronology and revised and expanded Selected Bibliography.

Jude Fawley is a simple working-class man who dreams of one day becoming something more. Yet after the failure of his first marriage, a loveless entrapment built upon lies, Jude starts to have feelings for his cousin, Sue Bridehead, and soon sacrifices all that he has to pursue a life together with her. A dark and pessimistic story of how man's unfettered desire may lead to the ruin of everyone around him, ‘Jude the Obscure’ led to a scandalous outcry amongst its Victorian readership. It is the final novel written by Thomas Hardy, and one of his most powerful in its unabashed exploration of class, religion, and sexuality. ‘Jude the Obscure’ is a perfect tragedy for readers of Brontë’s ‘Wuthering Heights’ or du Maurier's ‘Rebecca’. Thomas Hardy (1840-1928) was an English writer of poetry, novels, and short stories. He belonged to the Victorian realist tradition in English literature and was influenced by the writings of Romanticism. His novels strongly criticise Victorian society for constraining individuals in regard to marriage, education, and religion: shunning happiness in the name of social propriety. Hardy’s works explore themes of love, class, and poverty with a painstaking devotion to realism. His best-known works include ‘Far From the Madding Crowd’, ‘The Mayor of Casterbridge’, ‘Tess of the d’Urbervilles’, and ‘Jude the Obscure’.