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"I'm an outsider to the end of my days "

Hardy's last and most controversial novel, Jude the Obscure caused much outrage when it was published in 1895. Jude Fawley, poor and working-class, longs to study at the University of Christminster, but his ambitions to go to university are thwarted by class prejudice and his... Read Full Overview

The Norton Critical Edition also includes:
- Expanded footnotes by Ralph Pite, further drawing out Hardy's web of allusions and comprehensively indicating the material culture in which he embeds this narrative.
- A selection of Hardy's poems--four of them new to the... Read Full Overview

In 1895 Hardy's final novel, the great tale of Jude the Obscure , sent shock waves of indignation rolling across Victorian England. Hardy had dared to write frankly about sexuality and to indict the institutions of marriage, education, and religion. But he had, in fact, created... Read Full Overview

Powerful and controversial from its 1895 publication to the present, Jude the Obscure scandalized Victorian critics, who condemned it as decadent, indecent, and degenerate. Between its frank portrayals of sexuality and its indictments of marriage, religion, and England's class... Read Full Overview

The innocent and na ve Jude Fawley is trapped into marriage by the seductive Arabella Donn. But their union is an unhappy one, and Arabella leaves him. Jude's welcome freedom allows him to pursue his obsession with his pretty cousin, Sue Bridehead, a brilliant, charismatic... Read Full Overview

"I'm an outsider to the end of my days "

In 1895 Hardy's final novel, the great tale of Jude the Obscure , sent shock waves of indignation rolling across Victorian England. Hardy had dared to write frankly about sexuality and to indict the institutions of marriage, education, and religion. But he had, in fact, created... Read Full Overview

&&LIJude the Obscure&&L/I, by &&LBThomas Hardy&&L/B, is part of the &&LIBarnes & Noble Classics&&L/I&&LI &&L/Iseries, which offers quality editions at affordable prices to the student and the general reader, including new scholarship, thoughtful design, and pages of carefully... Read Full Overview

Upon its first appearance in 1895, Thomas Hardy's Jude the Obscure shocked Victorian critics and readers with a frank depiction of sexuality and an unbridled indictment of the institutions of marriage, education, and religion, reportedly causing one Angli-can bishop to order... Read Full Overview

Hardy's last and most controversial novel, Jude the Obscure caused much outrage when it was published in 1895. Jude Fawley, poor and working-class, longs to study at the University of Christminster, but his ambitions to go to university are thwarted by class prejudice and his... Read Full Overview

Hardy's last and most controversial novel, Jude the Obscure caused much outrage when it was published in 1895. Jude Fawley, poor and working-class, longs to study at the University of Christminster, but his ambitions to go to university are thwarted by class prejudice and his... Read Full Overview

"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

Jude the Obscure, the semi-autobiographical final... Read Full Overview

Jude Fawley and Sue Bridehead both had unhappy first marriages, so when they fall in love, they cannot prevent the past from returning, bringing them both great sadness.

The novel is fully annotated and is accompanied by Hardy's map of Wessex and a plan of late Victorian Oxford (the Christminster of the novel).

The textual history of Jude the Obscure--including an account of the surviving manuscript showing Hardy's major change of intention... Read Full Overview