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Thomas Hardy's tragic vision of a love struggling to overcome prejudice and rejection, The Return of the Native is edited in Penguin Classics with an introduction by Penny Bouhmelha.

'To be loved to madness - such was her great desire'

'To be loved to madness - such was her great desire' Eustacia Vye criss-crosses the wild Egdon Heath, eager to experience life to the full in her quest for 'music, poetry, passion, war'. She marries Clym Yeobright, native of the heath, but his idealism frustrates her romantic... Read Full Overview

One of Hardy's most popular novels. Hardy's choice of themes - sexual politics, thwarted desire, and the conflicting demands of nature and society - makes this a truly modern novel. Underlying these modern themes, however, is a classical sense of tragedy: Hardy scrupulously observes... Read Full Overview

It is accompanied by more than 500 editorial footnotes, many new to this edition, that provide essential historical background and glossing of dialect words. Also new to the Second Edition are the twelve illustrations from the novel's first serial publication and Hardy's "Sketch... Read Full Overview

Backgrounds and Contexts provides a useful "Glossary of Dialect Words" as well as four essays on the textual and publication history of the novel--including pieces by Simon Gatrell and Andrew Nash--all of which are newly included. Also included are six of Hardy's nonfiction writings... Read Full Overview

The classic novel about love and ambition set in the countryside of England from the beloved author of Jude the Obscure . The rural tranquility of the heather-covered English countryside is the setting for this moving novel of conflicting aspirations and tragic destiny. Clym... Read Full Overview

First published serially between January and December of 1878 in the sensationalistic monthly London magazine "Belgravia", Thomas Hardy's "The Return of the Native" is the author's sixth published novel. Set in Egdon Heath, an area of Thomas Hardy's fictionalized Wessex known... Read Full Overview

A Saturday afternoon in November was approaching the time of twilight, and the vast tract of unenclosed wild known as Egdon Heath embrowned itself moment by moment. Overhead the hollow stretch of whitish cloud shutting out the sky was as a tent which had the whole heath for its... Read Full Overview