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Thomas Hardy's Wessex
Thomas Hardy's Wessex is the fictional literary landscape created by the English author Thomas Hardy as the setting for his major novels, located in the south and southwest of England. Hardy named the area "Wessex" after the medieval Anglo-Saxon kingdom that existed in this part of that country prior to the unification of England by Æthelstan. Although the places that appear in his novels actually exist, in many cases he gave the place a fictional name. For example, Hardy's home town of Dorchester is called Casterbridge in his books, notably in ''The Mayor of Casterbridge''. In an 1895 preface to the 1874 novel '' Far From the Madding Crowd'' he described Wessex as "a merely realistic dream country". The actual definition of "Hardy's Wessex" varied widely throughout Hardy's career, and was not definitively settled until after he retired from writing novels. When he created the concept of a fictional Wessex, it consisted merely of the small area of Dorset in which Hardy grew up ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Wessex
la, Regnum Occidentalium Saxonum , conventional_long_name = Kingdom of the West Saxons , common_name = Wessex , image_map = Southern British Isles 9th century.svg , map_caption = Southern Britain in the ninth century , event_start = Established , year_start = 519 , event_end = English unification , year_end = 12 July 927 , event1 = , date_event1 = , event_pre = Settlement , date_pre = 5th–6th century , event_post = Norman conquest , date_post = 14 October 1066 , border_s2 = no , common_languages = Old English * West Saxon dialect British Latin , religion = PaganismChristianity , leader1 = Cerdic (first) , leader2 = Ine , leader3 = Ecgberht , leader4 = Alfred the Great , leader ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Wessex Regionalist Party
The Wessex Regionalists are a minor English regionalist political party in the United Kingdom. It seeks a degree of legislative and administrative home rule for Wessex, an area in the south and south-west of England loosely based on the Anglo-Saxon kingdom of the same name. The party has contested a small number of Wessex-area parliamentary constituencies in most elections since it was established, but without success. History Speaking at a tourism industry conference in 1969, the then Viscount Weymouth suggested Wessex as a regional identity for tourism purposes. He later objected to the press over Wessex not being given the same opportunities as Scotland or Wales in the Kilbrandon Report. Lord Weymouth subsequently stood as the first Wessex Regionalist parliamentary candidate in Westbury in the February 1974 United Kingdom general election, coming last with 521 votes. The party was formally constituted in 1981. It initially used Thomas Hardy's definition of Wessex as Ber ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
The Woodlanders
''The Woodlanders'' is a novel by Thomas Hardy. It was serialised from May 1886 to April 1887 in '' Macmillan's Magazine'' and published in three volumes in 1887. It is one of his series of Wessex novels. Plot summary The story takes place in a small woodland village called Little Hintock, and concerns the efforts of an honest woodsman, Giles Winterborne, to marry his childhood sweetheart, Grace Melbury. Although they have been informally betrothed for some time, her father has made financial sacrifices to give his adored only child a superior education and no longer considers Giles good enough for her. When the new doctor – a well-born and handsome young man named Edred Fitzpiers – takes an interest in Grace, her father does all he can to make Grace forget Giles, and to encourage what he sees as a brilliant match. Grace has misgivings prior to the marriage as she sees a village woman (Suke Damson) coming out of his cottage very early in the morning and suspects he has bee ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Two On A Tower
''Two on a Tower: A Romance'' (1882) is a novel by English author Thomas Hardy, classified by him as a romance and fantasy it is one of his minor works. The book is one of Hardy's Wessex novels, set in late Victorian Dorset. Epigraph Hardy placed an epigraph at the beginning of this book. The epigraph is from a Richard Crashaw poem, ''Love's Horoscope''. It reads: "Ah, my heart her eyes and she Have taught thee new astrology. Howe'er Love's native hours were set, Whatever starry synod met, 'Tis in the mercy of her eye, If poor Love shall live or die." Plot ''Two On A Tower'' is a tale of star-crossed love in which Hardy sets the emotional lives of his two lovers against the background of the stellar universe. The unhappily married Lady Constantine breaks all the rules of social decorum when she falls in love with Swithin St. Cleeve, an astronomer who is ten years her junior. Her husband's death leaves the lovers free to marry, but the discovery of a legacy forces them apart. ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
A Laodicean
''A Laodicean; or, The Castle of the De Stancys. A Story of To-Day'' is a novel by Thomas Hardy, first published in 1880–81 in '' Harper's New Monthly Magazine''. The plot exhibits devices uncommon in Hardy's other fiction, such as falsified telegrams and faked photographs. Synopsis Paula Power inherits a medieval castle from her industrialist father who had purchased it from the aristocratic De Stancy family. She employs two architects, one local and one, George Somerset, newly qualified from London. Somerset represents modernity in the novel. In the village there is an amateur photographer, William Dare, the illegitimate son of Captain De Stancy, an impoverished scion of that family. Captain De Stancy represents to Paula the notion of medieval nobility. She is attracted to each man for his respectively different virtues. William Dare, bastard and unrecognised son of Captain de Stancy, and a thorough wastrel, decides to intervene to promote his father in her affections (s ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
The Trumpet-Major
''The Trumpet-Major'' is a novel by Thomas Hardy published in 1880, and his only historical novel, and Hardy included it with his "romances and fantasies". It concerns the heroine, Anne Garland, being pursued by three suitors: John Loveday, the eponymous trumpet major in a British regiment, honest and loyal; his brother Bob, a flighty sailor; and Festus Derriman, the cowardly nephew of the local squire. Unusually for a Hardy novel, the ending is not entirely tragic; however, there remains an ominous element in the probable fate of one of the main characters. The novel is set in Weymouth during the Napoleonic wars; the town was then anxious about the possibility of invasion by Napoleon. Of the two brothers, John fights with Wellington in the Peninsular War, and Bob serves with Nelson at Trafalgar. The Napoleonic Wars was a setting that Hardy would use again in his play, ''The Dynasts'', and it borrows from the same source material.Taylor xxi-xxii Edward Neill has called the nove ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
The Return Of The Native
''The Return of the Native'' is Thomas Hardy's sixth published novel. It first appeared in the magazine ''Belgravia'', a publication known for its sensationalism, and was presented in twelve monthly installments from January to December 1878. Because of the novel's controversial themes, Hardy had some difficulty finding a publisher; reviews, however, though somewhat mixed, were generally positive. In the twentieth century, ''The Return of the Native'' became one of Hardy's most popular and highly regarded novels. Plot summary The novel takes place entirely in the environs of Egdon Heath, and, with the exception of the epilogue, ''Aftercourses'', covers exactly a year and a day. The narrative begins on the evening of Guy Fawkes Night as Diggory Venn is slowly crossing the heath with his van, which is being drawn by ponies. In his van is a passenger. When darkness falls, the country folk light bonfires on the surrounding hills, emphasising the pagan spirit of the heath and its deni ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
The Hand Of Ethelberta
''The Hand of Ethelberta: A Comedy in Chapters'' is a novel by Thomas Hardy, published in 1876. It was written, in serial form, for ''The Cornhill Magazine'', which was edited by Leslie Stephen, a friend and mentor of Hardy's. Unlike the majority of Hardy's fiction, the novel is a comedy, with both humour and a happy ending for the major characters and no suicides or tragic deaths. The late nineteenth century novelist George Gissing, who knew Hardy, considered it "surely old Hardy's poorest book". Plot summary At the beginning of the book, it is told that Ethelberta was raised in humble circumstances but, through her work as a governess, married well at the age of eighteen. Her husband died two weeks after the wedding and, now twenty-one, Ethelberta lives with her mother-in-law, Lady Petherwin. In the three years that have elapsed since the deaths of both her husband and father-in-law, Ethelberta has been treated to foreign travel and further privilege by her benefactress, but ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Far From The Madding Crowd
''Far from the Madding Crowd'' (1874) is Thomas Hardy's fourth novel and his first major literary success. It originally appeared anonymously as a monthly serial in ''Cornhill Magazine'', where it gained a wide readership. The novel is set in Thomas Hardy's Wessex in rural southwest England, as had been his earlier ''Under the Greenwood Tree''. It deals in themes of love, honour and betrayal, against a backdrop of the seemingly idyllic, but often harsh, realities of a farming community in Victorian England. It describes the life and relationships of Bathsheba Everdene with her lonely neighbour William Boldwood, the faithful shepherd Gabriel Oak, and the thriftless soldier Sergeant Troy. On publication, critical notices were plentiful and mostly positive. Hardy revised the text extensively for the 1895 edition and made further changes for the 1901 edition. The novel has an enduring legacy. In 2003, the novel was listed at number 48 on the BBC's survey The Big Read, while in ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
A Pair Of Blue Eyes
''A Pair of Blue Eyes'' is a novel by Thomas Hardy, published in 1873, first serialised between September 1872 and July 1873. It was Hardy's third published novel, and the first not published anonymously upon its first publication. Hardy included it with his "romances and fantasies". Plot The book describes the love triangle of a young woman, Elfride Swancourt, and her two suitors from very different backgrounds. Stephen Smith is a socially inferior but ambitious young man who adores her and with whom she shares a country background. Henry Knight is the respectable, established, older man who represents London society. Although the two are friends, Knight is not aware of Smith's previous liaison with Elfride. Elfride finds herself caught in a battle with her heart, her mind and the expectations of those around her – her parents and society. When Elfride's father finds that his guest and candidate for his daughter's hand, architect's assistant Stephen Smith, is the son of a ma ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Under The Greenwood Tree
''Under the Greenwood Tree: A Rural Painting of the Dutch School'' is a novel by the English writer Thomas Hardy, published anonymously in 1872. It was Hardy's second published novel, and the first of what was to become his series of Wessex novels. Critics recognise it as an important precursor to his later tragic works, setting the scene for the Wessex that the author would return to again and again. Hardy himself called the story of the Mellstock Quire and its west-gallery musicians "a fairly true picture, at first hand, of the personages, ways, and customs which were common among such orchestral bodies in the villages of he 1850s" Plot The novel follows the activities of a group of west gallery musicians, the Mellstock parish choir, one of whom, Dick Dewy, becomes romantically entangled with a comely new village schoolmistress, Fancy Day. The novel opens with the fiddlers and singers of the choir — including Dick, his father Reuben Dewy, and grandfather William Dewy ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Desperate Remedies
''Desperate Remedies'' is the second novel by Thomas Hardy, albeit the first to be published. It was released anonymously by Tinsley Brothers in 1871. Plot summary In ''Desperate Remedies'' a young woman, Cytherea Graye, is forced by poverty to accept a post as lady's maid to the eccentric Miss Aldclyffe, the woman whom her father had loved but had been unable to marry. Cytherea loves a young architect, Edward Springrove, but Miss Adclyffe's machinations, the discovery that Edward is already engaged to a woman whom he does not love, and the urgent need to support a sick brother drive Cytherea to accept the hand of Aeneas Manston, Miss Aldclyffe’s illegitimate son, whose first wife is believed to have perished in a fire; however, their marriage is almost immediately nullified when it emerges that his first wife had left the inn before it caught fire. Manston's wife, apparently, returns to live with him, but Cytherea, her brother, the local rector, and Edward come to suspec ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
