Thomas Hardy

When Henchard, an out-of-work hay-trusser gets drunk and sells his wife at a country fair, his life will never be the same. 18 years later, his wife and daughter return to Casterbridge to find that Henchard has become mayor. Although he's spent most of his life attempting to repent for his actions, he remains a rash and impetuous man.

Cruelly seduced by her relative, the cynical Alec D'Urberville, betrayed by the moral Angel Clare and haunted by her guilt and shame, Tess becomes Hardy's indictment of all the crimes and hyprocrisies of 19th century England.

The wilds of Egdon Heath seem like a prison to Eustacia Vye, cut off from the world in her grandfather's lonely cottage. So, to find some excitement, Eustacia decides to get married.

Set in the Dorset landscape familiar to Hardy novels, The Woodlanders tells the story of two women who love the same man. Grace Melbury and Marty South compete for the attention of Giles Winterbourne, but both are doomed to disappointment.

This is the story of a young country workman obsessed by his ambition to become an Oxford student, interwoven with his fraught relationships with two women.

Desperate Remedies was Hardy's first published novel and is part gothic romance, part sensation novel as well as being an intriguing mystery. Hardy's open and intimate descriptions of middle class women caused great controversy in 1871.

The Napoleonic Wars shape and colour this love story set in a Wessex village near the coast, astir with the fears and military preparations of its time. Hardy tells the story of Anne Garland and her 3 suitors, sailor, soldier and militia-man.

This biography covers Hardy's illegitimate birth, his rural upbringing, his escape to London in the 1860s, his marriages, his status as a bestselling novelist, and in later life, his supreme achievements as a poet.