- Published: 5 September 2006
- ISBN: 9781101141830
- Imprint: PEN US eBook Adult
- Format: EBook
- Pages: 432
Tess of the D'Urbervilles
The new paperback series: Penguin English Library
An intimate portrait of a woman, one of literature's most admirable and tragic heroines...
Tess Durbeyfield knows what it is to work hard and expect little. But her life is about to veer from the path trod by her mother and grandmother. When her ne’er-do-well father learns that his family is the last of a long noble line, the d’Urbervilles, he sends Tess on a journey to meet her supposed kin—a journey that will see her victimized by lust, poverty, and hypocrisy. Shaped by an acute sense of social injustice and by a vision of human fate cosmic in scope, her story is a singular blending of harsh realism and poignant beauty. Thomas Hardy created in Tess not a standard Victorian heroine but a woman whose intense vitality shines against the bleak backdrop of a dying way of life. The novel shocked contemporary readers with its honesty and remains a timeless commentary on the human condition.
With an Introduction by Marcelle Clements
- Published: 5 September 2006
- ISBN: 9781101141830
- Imprint: PEN US eBook Adult
- Format: EBook
- Pages: 432
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About the author
Thomas Hardy was born in Dorset in 1840 and became an apprentice architect at the age of sixteen. He spent his twenties in London, where he wrote his first poems. In 1867 Hardy returned to his native Dorset, whose rugged landscape was a great source of inspiration for his writing. Between 1871 and 1897 he wrote fourteen novels, including Tess of the D'Urbervilles and Jude the Obscure. This final work was received savagely; thereafter Hardy turned away from novels and spent the last thirty year of his life focusing on poetry. He died in 1928.