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Thomas Hardy

Thomas Hardy (1840-1928) was an English novelist and poet, known for his depiction of the rural life and social issues in the Victorian era. His notable works include "Tess of the d'Urbervilles," "Far from the Madding Crowd," and "Jude the Obscure," which often explore themes of fate, love, and the struggle against societal constraints. Hardy's writing is characterized by its rich, descriptive style and profound pessimism, reflecting his belief in the indifferent nature of the universe.
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Thomas Hardy
CHAPTER I. The rambler who, for old association or other reasons, should trace the forsaken coach-road running almost in a meridional line from Bristol to the south shore of England, would find himself during the latter half of his journey in the vicinity of some extensive woodlands, interspersed with apple-orchards. Here the trees, timber or fruit-bearing, as the case may be, make the wayside hedges...
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Thomas Hardy
1. DECEMBER AND JANUARY, 1835-36 In the long and intricately inwrought chain of circumstance which renders worthy of record some experiences of Cytherea Graye, Edward Springrove, and others, the first event directly influencing the issue was a Christmas visit. In the above-mentioned year, 1835, Ambrose Graye, a young architect who had just begun the practice of his profession in the midland town of...
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Thomas Hardy
THE SON’S VETO CHAPTER I To the eyes of a man viewing it from behind, the nut-brown hair was a wonder and a mystery. Under the black beaver hat, surmounted by its tuft of black feathers, the long locks, braided and twisted and coiled like the rushes of a basket, composed a rare, if somewhat barbaric, example of ingenious art. One could understand such weavings and coilings being wrought to last...
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Thomas Hardy
PREFACE. This slightly-built romance was the outcome of a wish to set the emotional history of two infinitesimal lives against the stupendous background of the stellar universe, and to impart to readers the sentiment that of these contrasting magnitudes the smaller might be the greater to them as men. But, on the publication of the book people seemed to be less struck with these high aims of the author...
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1. A STREET IN ANGLEBURY—A HEATH NEAR IT—INSIDE THE ‘RED LION’ INN Young Mrs. Petherwin stepped from the door of an old and well-appointed inn in a Wessex town to take a country walk. By her look and carriage she appeared to belong to that gentle order of society which has no worldly sorrow except when its jewellery gets stolen; but, as a fact not generally known, her claim to distinction was...
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Thomas Hardy
The Spectacle here presented in the likeness of a Drama is concerned with the Great Historical Calamity, or Clash of Peoples, artificially brought about some hundred years ago. The choice of such a subject was mainly due to three accidents of locality. It chanced that the writer was familiar with a part of England that lay within hail of the watering-place in which King George the Third had his...
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Thomas Hardy
Part First "Yea, many there be that have run out of their wits for women, and become servants for their sakes. Many also have perished, have erred, and sinned, for women… O ye men, how can it be but women should be strong, seeing they do thus?"—Esdras. I The schoolmaster was leaving the village, and everybody seemed sorry. The miller at Cresscombe lent him the small white tilted cart...
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Thomas Hardy
AN UPBRAIDING Now I am dead you sing to me The songs we used to know,But while I lived you had no wish Or care for doing so. Now I am dead you come to me In the moonlight, comfortless;Ah, what would I have given alive To win such tenderness! When you are dead, and stand to me Not differenced, as now,But like again, will you be cold As when we lived, or how? "These...
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Thomas Hardy
I A Saturday afternoon in November was approaching the time of twilight, and the vast tract of unenclosed wild known as Egdon Heath embrowned itself moment by moment. Overhead the hollow stretch of whitish cloud shutting out the sky was as a tent which had the whole heath for its floor. The heaven being spread with this pallid screen and the earth with the darkest vegetation, their meeting-line at the...
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Thomas Hardy
PREFACE This story of the Mellstock Quire and its old established west-gallery musicians, with some supplementary descriptions of similar officials in Two on a Tower, A Few Crusted Characters, and other places, is intended to be a fairly true picture, at first hand, of the personages, ways, and customs which were common among such orchestral bodies in the villages of fifty or sixty years ago. One is...
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