Book description
"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.
Thomas Hardy was born on June 2, 1840. An extremely productive
novelist, Hardy published an important book every year or two. In
1896, disturbed by the public outcry over the unconventional subjects
of his two greatest novels-Tess of the D'Urbervilles and Jude the
Obscure-he announced that he was giving up fiction and afterward
produced only poetry. In later years, he received many honors. He died
on January 11, 1928, and was buried in Poet's Corner, in Westminster Abbey.
Kristin Brady taught English at the University of Western Ontario.
She edited The Withered Arm and Other Stories for Penguin Classics.
