Издания и произведения

In this, his first collection of short stories, Hardy sought to record the legends, superstitions, local customs, and lore of a Wessex that was rapidly passing out of memory. But these tales also portray the social and economic stresses of 1880s Dorset, and reveal Hardy's growing scepticism about the possibility of achieving personal and sexual satisfaction in the modern world. By turns humorous, ironic, macabre, and elegiac, these seven stories show the range of Hardy's story-telling genius. The critically established text, the first to be based on detailed study of all revised texts, presents manuscript readings which have never before…

In "Wessex Tales," his first collection of short stories, Hardy sought to record the legends, superstitions, local customs and lore of a Wessex that was rapidly passing out of memory. But these "Tales" also portray the social and economic stresses of Dorset in the 1880s, and reveal Hardy's growing scepticism about the possiblity of achieving personal and sexual satisfaction in the modern world. By turns humorous, ironic, macabre, and elegiac, these seven stories show the range of Hardy's story-telling gifts.

Wessex Tales was the first collection of Hardy's short stories, and they reflect the experience of a novelist at the height of his powers. These seven tales, in which characters and scenes are imbued with a haunting realism, show considerable diversity of content, form and style, and range from fantasy to realism and from tragedy to comedy.

Wessex Novels and Tales of Thomas Hardy are set in the south and southwest of England, in the area Hardy named «Wessex» after the medieval Anglo-Saxon kingdom that existed in this part of that country prior to the unification of England by Æthelstan. These tales depict strong characters struggling against their passions and social circumstances. Wessex Novels: Under the Greenwood Tree Far from the Madding Crowd The Return of the Native The Mayor of Casterbridge The Woodlanders Tess of the d'Urbervilles Jude the Obscure A Pair of Blue Eyes The Trumpet-Major Two on a Tower The Romantic Adventures of a…