Book description
"I would be content, ay, glad, to live with you as your
servant, if I may not as your wife; so that I could only be near
you, and get glimpses of you, and think of you as mine ... I long
for only one thing in heaven or earth or under the earth, to meet
you, my own dear! Come to me - come to me, and save me from what
threatens me!"
When Tess Durbeyfield is driven by family poverty to claim kinship
with the wealthy D'Urbervilles and seek a portion of their family
fortune, meeting her 'cousin' Alec proves to be her downfall. A very
different man, Angel Clare, seems to offer her love and salvation, but
Tess must choose whether to reveal her past or remain silent in the
hope of a peaceful future. With its sensitive depiction of the wronged
Tess and powerful criticism of social convention, Tess of the
D'Urbervilles is one of the most moving and poetic of Hardy's novels.
The Penguin English Library - 100 editions of the best fiction in
English, from the eighteenth century and the very first novels to the
beginning of the First World War.
Formerly a prize-winning architectural student, Thomas Hardy
(1840-1928) went on to become a prolific novelist and poet. Tess of
the D'Urbervilles, set in the 'partly real, partly
dream-country' of Wessex, was at first refused publication and then
published in censored form, shocking readers in the challenge it posed
to social and sexual mores.
Hardy's novels Under the Greenwood Tree, Far From the
Madding Crowd, The Return of the Native, Two on a
Tower, The Mayor of Casterbridge and Jude the Obscure
are also published in the Penguin English Library.
