Tess Of The D'urbervilles

By (author) Thomas Hardy; By (author) Hardy, Thomas; Edited by Dolin Tim; Introduction by Higonnet, Margaret
Short description/annotation:
When Tess Durbeyfield is driven by family poverty to claim kinship with the wealthy D''Urbervilles and seek a portion of their family fortune, meeting her ''cousin'' Alec proves to be her downfall.
Description:

''The greatest tragic writer among the English novelists'' Virginia Woolf

With its depiction of the wronged ''pure woman'' Tess and its powerful criticism of Victorian hypocrisy, Tess of the D''Urbervilles is one of the most moving and poetic of Hardy''s novels. When its heroine, Tess Durbeyfield, is driven by family poverty to claim kinship with the wealthy D''Urbervilles, meeting her ''cousin'' Alec proves to be her downfall. A very different man, Angel Clare, seems to offer her love and salvation, but Tess must choose whether to reveal her past or remain silent in the hope of a peaceful future.

Edited with notes by TIM DOLIN and an Introduction by MARGARET R. HIGONNET

Review quote:
“[Tess of the D’Urbervilles is] Hardy’s finest, most complex and most notorious novel . . . The novel is not a mere plea for compassion for the eternal victim, though that is the banner it flies. It also involves a profound questioning of contemporary morality.” –from the Introduction by Patricia Ingham
Biographical note:

Thomas Hardy was born in 1840 and wrote both poetry and novels, including The Mayor of Casterbridge, Far From the Madding Crowd and Jude the Obscure. He died in 1928.
Tim Dolin teaches English at the University of Newcastle, New South Wales.
Margaret R. Higonnet teaches English and Comparative Literature at the University of Connecticut.