Complete Works of Thomas Hardy

by Thomas Hardy

An alternate cover of this edition can be found here.

Features:
* illustrated with countless images relating to Hardy and his works
* annotated with concise introductions to the novels and other texts
* each novel has its own contents table - easily navigate between chapters!
* many of the novels are fully illustrated with original artwork – enjoy the true flavour of the Victorian text on your Kindle!
* information on the lost first novel ‘THE POOR MAN AND THE LADY', with a rare novella and poem tracing its content
* ALL of the short stories with BOTH chronological and alphabetical contents tables
* the compete plays – even including the rare “Tragedy of the Queen of Cornwall” available nowhere else as a digital book
* ALL of the poems with their own separate chronological and alphabetical contents tables – find that special poem easily and quickly!
* the poems are ALSO presented in their original collections, each with its own table
* scholarly ordering of texts into chronological order and literary genres
* special Hardy’s Wessex Map to accompany your reading of the novels
* includes a special criticism section, with 6 different texts from other authors and critics, examining Hardy's literary work in detail
* D.H Lawrence's lengthy critical book A STUDY OF THOMAS HARDY
* Hardy's wife's TWO biographies - explore the great writer's amazing life in detail - available nowhere else
* UPDATED with improved text and formatting in response to a customer's review

This truly is the ultimate Hardy collection, with all the novel, short fiction, poems and plays, which no respectable eBook collection should be without! Welcome to hours upon hours upon hours of reading one of literature’s greatest writers...

Please note: we aim to provide the most comprehensive author collections available to Kindle readers. Sadly, it’s not always possible to guarantee an absolutely ‘complete’ works, due to copyright restrictions or the scarcity of minor works. However, we do ensure our customers that every possible major text and a wealth of other material are included. We are dedicated to developing and enhancing our eBooks, which are available as free updates for customers who have already purchased them.

CONTENTS:

The Novels
THE POOR MAN AND THE LADY
AN INDISCRETION IN THE LIFE OF AN HEIRESS
DESPERATE REMEDIES
UNDER THE GREENWOOD TREE
A PAIR OF BLUE EYES
FAR FROM THE MADDING CROWD
THE HAND OF ETHELBERTA
THE RETURN OF THE NATIVE
THE TRUMPET-MAJOR
A LAODICEAN
TWO ON A TOWER
THE MAYOR OF CASTERBRIDGE
THE WOODLANDERS
TESS OF THE D’URBERVILLES
JUDE THE OBSCURE
THE WELL-BELOVED

The Complete Short Stories
CHRONOLOGICAL LIST OF HARDY’S SHORT STORIES
ALPHABETICAL LIST OF HARDY’S SHORT STORIES

The Short Story Collections

The Complete Poetry
CHRONOLOGICAL LIST OF HARDY’S POETRY
ALPHABETICAL LIST OF HARDY’S POETRY

The Poetry Collections
WESSEX POEMS AND OTHER VERSES
POEMS OF THE PAST AND THE PRESENT
TIME'S LAUGHINGSTOCKS AND OTHER VERSES
and MORE...

The Plays
THE DYNASTS
PART FIRST
PART SECOND
PART THIRD
TRAGEDY OF THE QUEEN OF CORNWALL

The Criticism
A STUDY OF THOMAS HARDY BY D.H. LAWRENCE
THOMAS HARDY BY LEON H. VINCENT
THE LYRICAL POETRY OF THOMAS HARDY BY EDMUND GOSSE
UNDER FRENCH ENCOURAGEMENT BY DAVID CHRISTIE MURRAY
THOMAS HARDY BY JOHN COWPER POWYS
A NOTE ON THE GENIUS OF THOMAS HARDY BY ARTHUR SYMONS

The Biographies
THE EARLY LIFE OF THOMAS HARDY, 1841–1891 BY FLORENCE HARDY
THE LATER YEARS OF THOMAS HARDY, 1892–1928 BY FLORENCE HARDY

HARDY’S WESSEX MAP

Genres: Classics, Fiction, Poetry, Ebooks, Literature, Collections, British Literature

9344 pages, Kindle Edition

First published January 1, 1912

About the author

Thomas Hardy, OM, was an English author of the naturalist movement, although in several poems he displays elements of the previous romantic and enlightenment periods of literature, such as his fascination with the supernatural. He regarded himself primarily as a poet and composed novels mainly for financial gain.

The bulk of his work, set mainly in the semi-fictional land of Wessex, delineates characters struggling against their passions and circumstances. Hardy's poetry, first published in his 50s, has come to be as well regarded as his novels, especially after The Movement of the 1950s and 1960s.

The term cliffhanger is considered to have originated with Thomas Hardy's serial novel A Pair of Blue Eyes in 1873. In the novel, Hardy chose to leave one of his protagonists, Knight, literally hanging off a cliff staring into the stony eyes of a trilobite embedded in the rock that has been dead for millions of years. This became the archetypal — and literal — cliff-hanger of Victorian prose.

Excerpted from Wikipedia.

Reviews

[B J Burton · Rating 5 out of 5]

I bought the Delphi Classics edition. Delphi has made a good job of this production. The text is faithfully reproduced; the illustrations are crystal clear.
Navigating around a 'complete works' in ebook format can be a nightmare, but it's difficult to see what more could be done than Delphi has done here. The table of contents is very detailed.
If anyone wants to add the complete works of Thomas Hardy to their elibrary they can't do better than this and at £1.92 it’s a bargain.

[Ivy H · Rating 4 out of 5]

This collection is such a treasured resource for anybody who loves Thomas Hardy's writings. I also loved that there were a few key treatises of literary criticism that will assist a lay reader in acquiring a basic understanding of the main elements that abound in Hardy's literature. I would have loved to see the inclusion of post modernist and revisionist criticism of Hardy's work. The section on criticism was limited to just a few of the older, popular and more established essays. I think the collection would have been enhanced by the addition of recent critical opinion. That's my chief complaint. I'd read most of Hardy's novels a long time ago but this collection provides the opportunity to re-read them because it's always great to look for things that I may have missed the first time ( and with an author who's this dynamic, there are always new things to analyze ). This collection was very user friendly and easy to navigate ( both Kindle and epub copies ). I loved reading through some of his poems since I'd never actually read many of them before. My favourite poem will always be "The Mongrel", even though it almost made me cry. I had to tell myself that it's just a fictitious poem but then reality intruded to remind me that there are still people who drown puppies. Of course, Hardy being Hardy had to make the drowning all about necessity due to the owner's financial hardship. I really doubt I'll ever read that awful, cruel poem again. I have yet to read the plays; maybe one day I'll be in the mood.

1. The first novel I decided to read again was Under the Greenwood Tree.

This is perhaps the lightest and least tragic of Hardy's novels ( heaven forbid I should say "happiest", because this is Hardy after all so the element of slight pathos is still there despite all the fun, skylarking and rural beauty ). It's a novel whose rural setting establishes the perfect background for the theme of Tradition vs Change, that is at the core of the story. The story is about a group of happy go lucky church musicians who are shocked when their vicar announces that he wishes to replace the old fashioned church choir music with the modern organ. Dick Dewey is the protagonist of the story and he's one of the old fashioned church musicians. He soon becomes infatuated with the new girl ( who's also the person who will be playing the organ ) Fancy Day. I loved Hardy's choice of names for his characters because it's so symbolic of who they are and what they represent ( and I refer to the protagonist's surname "Dewey" because the guy is definitely not a "dick" in the way modern readers would think. Lol. ). Dick is a shy, vulnerable and kind young man while Fancy is a pretty, slightly fickle and superficial young lady, who is a lot more modern minded than the traditional ladies in the village of Mellstock.

I felt a lot of sympathy for poor Dick Dewey because it's clear that he loves Fancy more than she loves him. She really makes him work hard for her affections and I hated the part where she accepts his proposal then goes on to also accept the vicar's proposal. She hides that part from poor Dick because she knows it shows how flighty she is in her affections. It also made me laugh a bit because Hardy never really presents women in a totally positive manner. They're either flighty and superficial or tragic and prone to misery or both. But Fancy does have her positive qualities because she represents the future for women who want to make their own life choices and not just be carried along on the wave of traditional expectations. In the end she does seem apologetic for her few wrong doings and comes to realize that she does indeed love Dick Dewey. The prose is less complicated than Hardy's later novels but is still filled with beautiful imagery ( a lot of it relating to the pastoral setting of the novel ).

2. Far from the Madding Crowd.

This was full of depressing things happening to the characters. The heroine Bathsheba is a very independent woman but she tends to toy with men's affections a lot. She's very beautiful, inherits a significant amount of money and has quite a few suitors. The most loyal of her suitors is Gabriel Oak and he is the one she finally ends up with when the novel ends. However poor Gabriel went through a lot turmoil in his life and a lot of it was due to his unrequited love for Bathsheba. She's a bit fickle too and eventually decides to marry the dashing soldier Sergeant Frank Troy. I loved Hardy's use of phallic imagery in the scene where Troy shows off his swordsman's skills to Bathsheba. There's a lot of significance in the naming of these characters: Bathsheba's is obviously Biblically symbolic and Gabriel ends up being as solid and dependable as his surname "Oak". His first name also represents him fittingly because he does serve as a sort o guardian angel for the flighty Bathsheba.

Bathsheba ends up getting marrying to Troy but he had only married her because he thought his real love Fanny Robin had dumped him. I personally grieved a lot for poor Fanny because she dies in childbirth and then Troy goes beserk because he blames himself ( and rightfully so ) for her predicament. This novel spanned at least a decade in the lives of Bathsheba and Gabriel who worked for her as a shepherd. This was a hauntingly beautiful novel with elements of both tragedy and humour. Hardy continued with his use of the pastoral setting but his thematic concerns have evolved to highlight far deeper human issues than were presented in Under the Greenwood Tree. It's not a light happy romance with just one girl and her one special guy. It's the story of a woman who grows to adulthood and learns that sometimes she can't always have what she wants. More importantly, she learns that maybe the best guy for her isn't the flashy macho type like Troy but the dependable, loving and loyal type like Gabriel Oak.


3. The Woodlanders

This novel has been termed by many to be Hardy's finest, but it's not my favourite. Hardy's prose is as eloquent and rich in imagery as ever but I could never quite get over my personal sadness at the death of the wonderful character Giles Winterborne. He was a solid, upstanding guy who is very similar to Gabriel Oak from Far From The Madding Crowd By Thomas Hardy in the way that he loves a woman so unselfishly - even when the female in question is unworthy of such loyal devotion. Unlike Gabriel Oak, however, the poor woodsman Giles dies tragically when he gets ill because he sleeps in the cold outdoors and gives up his little cottage for the annoying heroine Grace. Hardy's portrayal of the H's tragic chivalry is a recurring theme in his novels and it is repeated in Jude the Obscure by that title character. The author's continued fascination with the rural splendour of the landscape is seen in this novel. One of the strangest things I've also noticed about Hardy is his comic preoccupation with women who wear wigs. In this novel there's a wealthy woman called Mrs. Charmond who buys hair from a young peasant girl named Marty. There's another woman called Arabella in Jude the Obscure, who wears wigs that fool the H of that story into thinking she's an incomparable beauty. In both novels, Hardy highlights the eventual embarrassment that both women deal with when their hair is revealed to be fake. I have no idea why this amuses me so much but I guess it's the fact that a male author finds so much significance in it that he feels the need to write about it twice. Hardy also deals with the issue of marital infidelity in this novel and the difficulty that a wife faces when she wants a divorce based only on the fact of an adulterous husband. There's also the tragic peasant girl called Marty who suffers from her unrequited love for Giles Winterborne. That poor guy would have had a happier life had he loved Marty instead of the fickle Grace who dumped him to marry her rich but unfaithful husband. I guess it's Hardy's way of looking at the age old issue of love and how one cannot predict or control the object of one's heart and desires.


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I still have to read a few of the novels like A Pair of Blue Eyes, The Trumpet-Major and a couple others. My favourite novel of his will always be Tess of the D'Urbervilles, although Jude the Obscure and The Mayor of Casterbridge: By Thomas Hardy - Illustrated are the 2 others that always come to mind when I think of this author. Tess of the D'Urbervilles captures the tragic reality of life for a woman whose beauty becomes a curse when her poverty leaves her unprotected against the predatory actions of men, the rigid condemnation of society and the unstoppable ravages of Nature. A rich woman in Hardy's England would find that her beauty is an asset but for a poor girl like Tess, it becomes an albatross. I loved how Hardy often explored the common age old and Victorian concept of the Madonna vs The Whore in some of his novels. Some of his female characters, like Tess, were undeserving of the taint of " a fallen woman" because her plight is largely due to circumstances out of her control. Then there are others like the lush, wig wearing Arabella in Jude the Obscure who wields her female sexuality as a weapon and instrument of power. There is so much more to Hardy's genius that can never be analyzed or discussed in one short review ! This is a collection for all lovers of classic literature, but especially for fans of Thomas Hardy !

[Nick (11th Volume) · Rating 3 out of 5]

Ezra Pound once wrote that:

Nobody has taught me anything about writing since Thomas Hardy died.

On the subject of types of poets, he later wrote that:

I do not believe there are more than two roads:
1. The old man’s road (vide Tom. Hardy) — CONTENT, the INSIDES, the subject matter.
2. Music.

It is true that Hardy was more a poet of the subject than of the lyrical. That said, there are scattered throughout this collection, many great lyrical, musical poems. One of my favourites is The Wound: short, but punchy.

While I may not have time to dive deeper into Hardy’s larger oeuvre of poems, I am glad I read this collection, even though it took me over two years. That’s the way poetry should be read, in my opinion. Picked up and put down, whenever you feel; no commitment. If you feel melancholic, Hardy will tug at your heart strings.

[Pat Jennings · Rating 3 out of 5]

Read "The Woodlanders" having read several of Thomas Hardy's books previously.
I was delighted that I could download this whole collection for free. I have heard that others believed this to be Thomas Hardy's best book. Not so for me much preferring, Tess, The Return of the Native, and Far From the Madding Crowd.
There were five characters that interplayed and it was confusing to attempt of figure out what was really happening. Was the single widow having an affair with the Doctor. Was he a player with orher women as well? I knew that it would be revealed that he was a long lost brother to at least one of these women but no... Was Grace just a product of what her father created with no clarity about what she wanted that was called love? In the end, she remains with her husband with no surety that was the right path for her.
I wanted to know know more about Marty who seemed to have her act together better than the rest; she had the fewest resources but worked hard and paid dear prices for what she wanted in her life.

[Michael Peter Ansell · Rating 5 out of 5]

BACK TO SCHOOL!

I first came across Thomas Hardy when having been told we would be given the choice as to whether we did O Level English Literature or not, that the choice had been made for us and we were doing it. This is where I first met Thomas Hardy, in the form of Under the Greenwood Tree. He nicely combines a love story with a confict between old and new in his unique rustic setting.

At A Level I was introduced to the more blique Tess of the Durbevilles where Hardy highlights double. Tess is clearly not a criminal but a victim.

My favourite of his books is Jude the Obscure.

I very much enjoyed the Complete Works of Thomas Hardy, he tells it like it is.

[Jordan Phizacklea-Cullen · Rating 5 out of 5]

Took almost three years, but worth it! Congrats to Delphi Editions for compiling together not just all the novels, poetry and Florence Hardy's biography, but letters, archive photogrpahs and Wessex maps. If you want one of the greatest achievements of English novelists and poets in one place, can't be bettered.

[Richard Wilson · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excellent, powerful

Dickens famously dismissed Hardy, but,of the two, hes more like kin, his views of nature, sharp,psychology, human and nature interaction, a keen observer. Its these noticings of the prosaic that make him memorable.

[Virginia · Rating 5 out of 5]

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

[Addison · Rating 5 out of 5]

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ - Highly recommend!

[Drew]

The return of the native by Thomas Hardy (1966), Standard ed

[John Pendrey]

I thrilled to, "The Imaginative Woman" - it's as I imagine Mills and Boon but I think it gives real insights into romance and into Hardy's life.

[Bybliotech · Rating 5 out of 5]

Terrific Collection!

[keereads · Rating 3 out of 5]

Read

[Jim Kellner · Rating 5 out of 5]

Warning: not all happily ever after endings, but all good stories.