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TWO ON A TOWER (1882) 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... Read Full Overview

"But time is short, and science is infinite..."

Thomas Hardy (2nd June 1840 - 11th January 1928), celebrated poet and writer, was born in a modest thatched cottage near Dorchester in the West country, to a builder father. His mother came from a line of intelligent, lively and... Read Full Overview

Two On A Tower by Thomas Hardy is a tale of star-crossed love in which two lovers come together against the background of the stellar universe. The unhappily married Lady Constantine breaks all the rules of social convention when she falls in love with Swithin St. Cleeve, an... Read Full Overview

Two On A Tower by Thomas Hardy is a tale of star-crossed love in which two lovers come together against the background of the stellar universe. The unhappily married Lady Constantine breaks all the rules of social convention when she falls in love with Swithin St. Cleeve, an... Read Full Overview

On an early winter afternoon, clear but not cold, when the vegetable world was a weird multitude of skeletons through whose ribs the sun shone freely, a gleaming landau came to a pause on the crest of a hill in Wessex. The spot was where the old Melchester Road, which the carriage... Read Full Overview

Two on a Tower is Hardy's most complete and daring treatment of the theme of love between characters of different classes and ages. This sensational tale, which some reviewers of the first publication considered to be immoral, is informed throughout by the astronomical images... Read Full Overview

The Penguin English Library Edition of Two on a Tower by Thomas Hardy

'Then they proceeded to scan the sky, roving from planet to star, from single stars to double stars, from double to coloured stars...'

Classified by Hardy as a romance and fantasy and now regarded as one of his minor works. The book is one of the Wessex novels, set in a parallel version of late Victorian Dorset.

Two on a Tower is Hardy's most complete and daring treatment of the theme of love between characters of different classes and ages. This sensational tale, which some reviewers of the first publication considered to be immoral, is informed throughout by the astronomical images... Read Full Overview

Lady Constantine breaks all the rules of social decorum when she falls in love with the beautiful youth Swithin St Cleeve, her social inferior and ten years her junior. The tower in question is a monument converted into an astronomical observatory where together the lovers 'sweep... Read Full Overview

Two on a Tower, a tale of star crossed love, is considered a minor work of Thomas Hardy. When it was published, it was called 'shocking' and 'repulsive'. So, make of that what you will. But this was Victorian England, and the book tells the tale of an aristocratic woman falling... Read Full Overview