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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 South West England, southwest of England. Hardy named the area "Wessex" after Wessex, 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, Dorset, 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 th ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Wessex
The Kingdom of the West Saxons, also known as the Kingdom of Wessex, was an Anglo-Saxon Heptarchy, kingdom in the south of Great Britain, from around 519 until Alfred the Great declared himself as King of the Anglo-Saxons in 886. The Anglo-Saxons believed that Wessex was founded by Cerdic and Cynric of the Gewisse, though this is considered by some to be a legend. The two main sources for the history of Wessex are the West Saxon Genealogical Regnal List and the ''Anglo-Saxon Chronicle'' (the latter of which drew on and adapted an early version of the List), which sometimes conflict. Wessex became a Christianity, Christian kingdom after Cenwalh () was baptised and was expanded under his rule. Cædwalla later conquered Kingdom of Sussex, Sussex, Kingdom of Kent, Kent and the Isle of Wight. His successor, Ine of Wessex, Ine (), issued one of the oldest surviving English law codes and established a second West Saxon bishopric. The throne subsequently passed to a series of kings wit ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Wessex Regionalist Party
The Wessex Regionalists is 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 Be ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Wessex Tales
''Wessex Tales'' is an 1888 collection of tales written by English novelist and poet Thomas Hardy, many of which are set before Hardy's birth in 1840. In the various short stories, Hardy writes of the true nature of nineteenth-century marriage and its inherent restrictions, the use of grammar as a diluted form of thought, the disparities created by the role of class status in determining societal rank, the stance of women in society and the severity of even minor diseases causing the rapid onset of fatal symptoms prior to the introduction of sufficient medicinal practices. A focal point of all the short stories is that of social constraints acting to diminish one's contentment in life, necessitating unwanted marriages, repression of true emotion and succumbing to melancholia due to constriction within the confines of 19th-century perceived normalcy. Contents Initially, in 1888, the collection contained five stories, all previously published in periodicals: *"The Three Stran ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
The Woodlanders
''The Woodlanders'' is a novel by Thomas Hardy serialised from 15 May 1886 to 9 April 1887 in ''Macmillan's Magazine'' and published in three volumes in 1887. It is one of his series of Thomas Hardy's Wessex, 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 su ... [...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 regarded as one of his minor works. It 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 the ... [...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 the eighth published novel by English author 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 p ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
The Trumpet-Major
''The Trumpet-Major'' is the seventh published novel by English author Thomas Hardy published in 1880, and his only historical novel. 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-xxi ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
The Return Of The Native
''The Return of the Native'' is the sixth published novel by English author Thomas Hardy. It first appeared in the magazine ''Belgravia'', a publication known for its sensationalism, and was presented in twelve monthly instalments from 9 January to 19 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 Book First: The Three Women 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 ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
The Hand Of Ethelberta
''The Hand of Ethelberta: A Comedy in Chapters'' is the fifth published novel by English author 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. 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 Ethelberta was raised in humble circumstances, but through her work as a governess married well at the age of 18. Her husband died two weeks after the wedding and, now 21, 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 restricted from seeing her ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
A Pair Of Blue Eyes
''A Pair of Blue Eyes'' is the third published novel by English author Thomas Hardy, first serialised between September 1872 and July 1873, in '' Tinsley's Magazine'', and published in book form in 1873. It was Hardy's third published novel, and the first not published anonymously. Hardy included it with his "romances and fantasies". Plot The book describes the love triangle of a young, blue eyed 19-year-old 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, though sexually immature and inexperienced 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 fathe ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Under The Greenwood Tree
''Under the Greenwood Tree: A Rural Painting of the Dutch School'' is the second published novel by English author 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 grandfat ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Desperate Remedies
''Desperate Remedies'' is the first published novel by English author Thomas Hardy. It is considered a sensation novel because it contains themes of bigamy, murder, illegitimacy, blackmail, and impersonation. 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 ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
