http://heavenali.wordpress.com/2012/09/04/a-laodicean-thomas-hardy-1881/

Another one for the Hardy reading challenge.

http://heavenali.wordpress.com/2012/05/07/the-return-of-the-native-thomas-hardy-1878/

My latest wordpress blog post - my love of Thomas Hardy.

http://heavenali.wordpress.com/2012/03/05/thomas-hardy-a-love-affair/

Read for my Hardy reading challenge/reading group a re-read of a novel I first read when I was about 18 (for pleasure not O or A levels )

Far from the Madding Crowd is perhaps the most pastoral of Hardy's Wessex novels. It tells the story of the young farmer Gabriel Oak and his love for and pursuit of the elusive Bathsheba Everdene, whose wayward ( Read more... )

Read for The Thomas Hardy reading challenge.

Synopsis
"Under the Greenwood Tree" is Hardy's most bright, confident and optimistic novel. This delightful portrayal of a picturesque rural society, tinged with gentle humour and quiet irony, established Hardy as a writer. However, the novel is not merely a charming rural idyll. The double-plot, in which ( Read more... )

It is now about time for those taking part in the Thomas Hardy reading project to begin our second book, "Under the Greenwood Tree" Which I last read in 2008. So this will be third reading of it for me.

I have been quite pleased with how things have gone so far. Although we haven't heard from everyone who joined the group - we have had some ( Read more... )

Hardy's first published work, Desperate Remedies moves the sensation novel into new territory. The anti-hero, Aeneas Manston, as physically alluring as he is evil, even fascinates the innocent Cytherea, though she is in love with another man. When he cannot seduce her, Manston resorts to deception, blackmail, bigamy, murder, and rape. Yet this ( Read more... )

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This book contains introduction and notes by Dr Claire Seymour, University of Kent at Canterbury. The proverbial phrase 'life's little ironies' was coined by Hardy for his third volume of short stories. These tales and sketches possess all the power of his novels: the wealth of description, the realistic portrayal of the quaint lore of Wessex, the ( Read more... )

Our Exploits at West Poley was written by Thomas Hardy (1840-1928). Written in 1883, just before the Mayor of Casterbridge, it was originally serialised in the Boston magazine, The Household, between November 1892 and April 1893. It was subsequently re-published by the OUP in 1952 with illustrations by Lynton Lamb, and by Puffin in 1982, with ( Read more... )