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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
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
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
King’s-Hintock Court (said the narrator, turning over his memoranda for reference)—King’s-Hintock Court is, as we know, one of the most imposing of the mansions that overlook our beautiful Blackmoor or Blakemore Vale. On the particular occasion of which I have to speak this building stood, as it had often stood before, in the perfect silence of a calm clear night, lighted only by the cold shine...
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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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Thomas Hardy
1. I. A SUPPOSITITIOUS PRESENTMENT OF HER A person who differed from the local wayfarers was climbing the steep road which leads through the sea-skirted townlet definable as the Street of Wells, and forms a pass into that Gibraltar of Wessex, the singular peninsula once an island, and still called such, that stretches out like the head of a bird into the English Channel. It is connected with the...
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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
Chapter I 'A fair vestal, throned in the west' Elfride Swancourt was a girl whose emotions lay very near the surface. Their nature more precisely, and as modified by the creeping hours of time, was known only to those who watched the circumstances of her history. Personally, she was the combination of very interesting particulars, whose rarity, however, lay in the combination itself rather...
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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. One evening of late summer, before the nineteenth century had reached one-third of its span, a young man and woman, the latter carrying a child, were approaching the large village of Weydon-Priors, in Upper Wessex, on foot. They were plainly but not ill clad, though the thick hoar of dust which had accumulated on their shoes and garments from an obviously long journey lent a disadvantageous...
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Thomas Hardy
PREFACE. The changing of the old order in country manors and mansions may be slow or sudden, may have many issues romantic or otherwise, its romantic issues being not necessarily restricted to a change back to the original order; though this admissible instance appears to have been the only romance formerly recognized by novelists as possible in the case. Whether the following production be a picture...
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