Jude the Obscure

When Thomas Hardy’s Jude the Obscure appeared in 1895, it immediately caused scandal and controversy. Its frank treatment of Jude’s sexual relationships with Arabella and Sue, its scathing criticisms of late-Victorian hypocrisy, its depiction of the “New Woman,” and its attacks on “holy wedlock” and religious bigotry outraged numerous reviewers; one called the book “Jude the Obscene.” Others saw it as brilliantly progressive in its ideas and techniques. Vivid and complex, satiric and harrowing, this novel marked the culmination of Hardy’s development as a leading novelist of the cultural transition from the Victorian to the Modernist era. The Broadview edition restores the original, controversial 1895 text.

Thomas Hardy (1840 - 1928) was an English novelist and poet. A Victorian realist in the tradition of George Eliot, he was influenced both in his novels and in his poetry by Romanticism, especially William Wordsworth. He was highly critical of much in Victorian society, though Hardy focused more on a declining rural society. While Hardy wrote poetry throughout his life and regarded himself primarily as a poet, his first collection was not published until 1898. Initially, therefore, he gained fame as the author of such novels as Far from the Madding Crowd (1874), The Mayor of Casterbridge (1886), Tess of the d'Urbervilles (1891), and Jude the Obscure (1895). During his lifetime, Hardy's poetry was acclaimed by younger poets (particularly the Georgians) who viewed him as a mentor. After his death his poems were lauded by Ezra Pound, W. H. Auden and Philip Larkin. Many of his novels concern tragic characters struggling against their passions and social circumstances and they are often set in the semi-fictional region of Wessex; initially based on the medieval Anglo-Saxon kingdom, Hardy's Wessex eventually came to include the counties of Dorset, Wiltshire, Somerset, Devon, Hampshire and much of Berkshire, in southwest and south central England. He destroyed the manuscript of his first, unplaced novel, but -- encouraged by mentor and friend George Meredith -- tried again. His important work took place in an area of southern England he called Wessex, named after the English kingdom that existed before the Norman Conquest.

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"The greatest tragic writer among English novelists."-Virginia Woolf "There is no other novelist alive with the breadth of sympathy, the knowledge or the power for the creation of Jude." --H. G. Wells endering of a disturbed teenager. Jude the Obscure, the semi-autobiographical final novel from Thomas Hardy explores notions of surprising candor; within the eponymous protagonist lies the tragic truth of failed ambitions and relationships. In a fierce exploration of the darkness of love and the intellect, this is one of the great tragic novels of English literature. Jude Fawley, an earnest boy from a rural English village, dreams of a life of academia despite his working-class background. His childhood schoolmaster has moved away from the village to teach at the University in Christminster. Jude spends his free time self-educating himself with the aspirations of enrolling at Christminster, yet his dreams are thwarted when he falls in love with Arabella, a loutish and deceptive young woman who lures him into a disastrous marriage. After abandoning each other, Jude returns to his dream of becoming a scholar; he moves to Christminster, where he falls in love with his cousin Sue Bridehead, and subsequently abandons all hope of academia. An intricate web of darkness ensues when Arabella returns into his life with a troubled son, who she informs is Jude's. Trapped in an uncontrollable descent, Jude's fate delivers him unspeakable tragedy. Jude The Obscure is one of literatures great works that explore the alienation and intricacies of man's place in the world. With an eye-catching new cover, and professionally typeset manuscript, this edition of Jude the Obscure is both modern and readable.

"Hardy may have been born in 1840 shortly after Victoria came to the throne, but he speaks to the 20th century rather than the 19th."
--Independent

"Visceral, passionate, sylvan... anti-hypocrisy, anti-repression... dealing with love, death, with young people with everything before them, dealt a cruelly stacked hand... Hardy reaches deeper, into our wildest recesses. In a safe world, he speaks to our animal side."
--Evening Standard
"To no tragic novelist do we surrender more completely at the last...one of the most compassionate of all writers...you feel a kind of agony of helpless tenderness in the writer for all troubled souls" The Times "Hardy may have been born in 1840 shortly after Victoria came to the throne, but he speaks to the 20th century rather than the 19th." Independent "Visceral, passionate, sylvan...anti-hypocrisy, anti-repression..dealing with love, death, with young people with everything before them, dealt a cruelly stacked hand... Hardy reaches deeper, into our wildest recesses. In a safe world, he speaks to our animal side." Evening Standard "A classic outsider novel. An anthem to misery." -- Katy Guest The Independent

Part First: at Marygreen, I–XI; Part Second: at Christminster, I–VII; Part Third: at Melchester, I–X; Part Fourth: at Shaston, I–VI; Part Fifth: at Aldbrickham and elsewhere, I–VIII; Part Sixth: at Christminster again, I–XI.