Chosen by Anne Michaels as her Orange Inheritance. This Orange Inheritance Edition of Tess of the D'Urbervilles is published in association with the Orange Prize for Fiction.

Books shape our lives and transform the way we see ourselves and each other. The best books are timeless and continue to be relevant generation after generation. Vintage Classics asked the winners of The Orange Prize for Fiction which books they would pass onto the next generation and why. Anne Michaels chose Tess of the D'Urbervilles.

Tess is an innocent young girl until the day she goes to visit her rich 'relatives', the D'Urbervilles. Her encounter with her manipulative cousin, Alec, leads her onto a path that is beset with suffering and betrayal. When she falls in love with another man, Angel Clare, Tess sees a potential escape from her past, but only if she can tell him her shameful secret.

'One of the great, shattering, open-hearted legacies of twentieth-century English poetry.'---Edward Hirsch

'A superb volume.'---Harold Bloom

'The poems delve as deeply into the contradictions of the human heart as Hardy's finest novels.'---Dana Gioia

'Often lost in the abundance of Hardy's larger collections, these poems about Emma deserve their own space. In this little jewel-box of a book they have found it.'---Eamon Grennan

After the death of his wife, Emma, in 1912, the great English novelist an poet Thomas Hardy began to write a seris of poems about her. Although the couple had long been estranged, Hardy was suddenly enthralled all over again and became obsessed with memories of their love, as well as with remorse over what had gone wrong between them. This sequence, 'Poems of 1912-13,' has grown in stature in the century since it was written and is now considered to be one of his most accomplished works. Hardy continued to write about Emma for the rest of his life, and Unexpected Elegies includes a selection of the best of these other poems about Emma. The insightful introduction by the noted Hardy critic Claire Tomalin places the poems in a biographical context.

Thomas Hardy, a tutti noto come romanziere, è anche, e forse di più, un grande poeta, come tale riconosciuto e amato soprattutto dai poeti. Tormentate e struggenti poesie d'amore: il settantaduenne Hardy prese a scriverle dopo la morte, nel 1912, della prima moglie Emma Lavinia Gifford. Un incontro folgorante, un grande amore e una vera passione, conclusi in un matrimonio lungo e infelice, che si logora in un grumo velenoso di incomprensioni e rancori. Quando Emma improvvisamente muore ha luogo un mutamento prodigioso e Hardy viene travolto da un fiotto di ispirazione poetica, in cui il suo grande romantico amore giovanile diventa l'unica realtà che lo interessa. Più di cento sono le poesie per Emma, cariche di rimorso e rimpianto per ciò che è perso, ma piene di quella luce e di quelle emozioni che il vecchio poeta va ricercando e ritrovando. Poesie tra le più perfette della sua produzione: apparentemente semplici, nella grande varietà di forme metriche e strofiche, negli sviluppi e variazioni delle immemorabili forme tradizionali della ballata, nelle forme e nei ritmi organici in cui la lingua e l'esperienza quotidiana si bilanciano con il termine prezioso o l'immagine letteraria.

Il dramma epico di Thomas Hardy, 'I dinasti', è considerato una delle opere più importanti della letteratura inglese. Per la prima volta è tradotta integralmente in italiano. Temi ispiratori dell'opera sono la guerra e il problema esistenziale connesso alla teoria darwiniana della evoluzione. Rivive il conflitto tra Napoleone e le altre potenze europee (il duello tra i belligeranti, l'apogeo della Francia napoleonica e la catastrofe di Napoleone). La guerra è vista non come fonte di eroismo, ma come tragica conseguenza del potere di oligarchie. Il dramma storico è anche dramma filosofico. Assistono agli avvenimenti spettatori soprannaturali che il poeta chiama 'intelligences' o 'spirits', creature di pura fantasia le quali permettono all'autore di guardare la storia da diversi punti di vista e di vederla come parte di un processo cosmico.

In Jude l'oscuro (1896), l'intimo conflitto del protagonista tra energie fisiche e intellettuali ha un preciso collegamento con le problematiche dell'alienazione sociale ed economica. È, di nuovo, la sinistra, potente storia di una parabola distruttiva: Jude fa il muratore in un villaggio del Wessex, dopo essere fuggito dal suo paese natale. In seguito al fallimento del suo matrimonio con Arabella, prende la strada di Christminster - nella cui filigrana si intravede Oxford - dove allaccia un'ambigua relazione con la cugina Sue. I due decidono di convivere senza sposarsi, ma l'ombra di un oscuro presagio si allunga minacciosa sul loro futuro e un destino tragico, ineluttabile e crudele, non tarda a rivelarsi.

Details the story of Jude Fawley, a poor stonemason who longs to be a minister, and how the brutal deaths of his children and his inability to please the two women in his life hinder his dreams and threaten his existence

In this, his first collection of short stories, Hardy sought to record the legends, superstitions, local customs, and lore of a Wessex that was rapidly passing out of memory. But these tales also portray the social and economic stresses of 1880s Dorset, and reveal Hardy's growing scepticism about the possibility of achieving personal and sexual satisfaction in the modern world. By turns humorous, ironic, macabre, and elegiac, these seven stories show the range of Hardy's story-telling genius.
The critically established text, the first to be based on detailed study of all revised texts, presents manuscript readings which have never before appeared in print.

The stories include The Three Strangers; A Tradition of Eighteen Hundred and Four; The Melancholy Hussar of the German Legion; The Withered Arm; Fellow-Townsmen; Interlopers at the Knap; The Distracted Preacher

Classic / British English Gabriel Oak is an honest, hard-working young farmer, who falls in love with the beautiful and independent Bathsheba Everdene. After a tragic accident, Gabriel loses his farm. Bathsheba, on the other hand, becomes rich. Is there any hope for Gabriel?

Sullo sfondo dei pacifici paesaggi della campagna inglese, i protagonisti di questi 'racconti dell'orrore' si trovano ad affrontare l'incombere nelle loro vite di potenze esterne che portano scompiglio, quasi un destino malvagio contro il quale l'uomo non può nulla. Una costante di tutta la produzione letteraria di Hardy è 'il contrasto tra la vita ideale desiderata dall'uomo e quella reale e squallida che è destinato ad avere'. Malattia, odio, morte sono i temi ricorrenti di queste storie, immerse in un'atmosfera magica e cupa, densa di presenze sovrannaturali, dove il Male appare un castigo imposto a creature deboli e oneste, le cui sorti si incrociano tragicamente.

Siamo alla fine del Settecento. Barbara della nobile casata dei Grebe, sposa il borghese Edmund Willows, conquistata dalla sua straordinaria bellezza. È quella, e solo quella, ad accendere la passione della giovane donna. Poco dopo le nozze il marito parte per un viaggio in Europa e Barbara, per ricordarsi delle fattezze splendide fa eseguire un ritratto marmoreo del marito per tenere desta la sua passione. Mentre è sulla via del ritorno Edmund rimane orribilmente sfigurato in un incendio scoppiato a Venezia. Torna a casa con il viso protetto da una maschera di seta ma Barbara non regge alla vista di quella deformazione: il suo grido di orrore allontana il marito per sempre. A questo punto entra in scena Lord Uplandtower che riesce a sposare Barbara convinto di riuscire a farle dimenticare il bellissimo Edmund. Ma si sbaglia: Barbara è come presa da un'ossessione; notte dopo notte la statua del primo marito riceve gli abbracci di colei che non è più sua moglie. Quella follia è, secondo Lord Uplandtower, un autentico adulterio e con un colpo di teatro degno del grande sadico quale egli è, fa confezionare a sua volta, come l'anonimo scultore che a Pisa aveva riprodotto con tanta verosimiglianza il corpo di Willowes, una copia conforme di quel corpo violato dal fuoco, costringendo Barbara a contemplare la statua sfigurata.

Come tutti gli scrittori vittoriani, Thomas Hardy (1840-1928) si dedicava anche alle short stories, con risultati letterali non inferiori ai suoi grandi romanzi. Anzi, nel circoscritto e proteiforme recinto del racconto, poteva accadere di trovare 'un luogo di esperimenti formali di enorme interesse', e di consegnare - scrive la curatrice di questo 'Un semplice interludio'- ' significati più ambigui e trasgressivi'. È il caso di Baptista Trewthen, giovane maestra 'di poche emozioni e scarso temperamento', la quale, per strapparsi al proprio odiato lavoro, accetta il matrimonio con un uomo molto più vecchio, ma proprio alla vigilia incontra un antico spasimante e d'impulso lo sposa. Ne derivano gli inesorabili spostamenti, che trascinano, nella pessimistica filosofia di Hardy, i personaggi al compimento del loro destino, sempre beffardo e vendicativo.

Set against the backdrop of peaceful south-west England, where Thomas Hardy spent much of his youth, The Mayor of Casterbridge captures the author's unique genius for depicting the absurdity underlying much of the sorrow and humor in our lives.
Michael Henchard is an out-of-work hay-trusser who gets drunk at a local fair and impulsively sells his wife Susan and baby daughter. Eighteen years later Susan and her daughter seek him out, only to discover that he has become the most prominent man in Casterbridge. Henchard attempts to make amends for his youthful misdeeds but his unchanged impulsiveness clouds his relationships in love as well as his fortunes in business. Although Henchard is fated to be a modern-day tragic hero, unable to survive in the new commercial world, his story is also a journey towards love.
This edition is the only critically established text of the novel, based on a comprehensive study of the manuscript and Hardy's extensive revisions.
About the Series: For over 100 years Oxford World's Classics has made available the broadest spectrum of literature from around the globe. Each affordable volume reflects Oxford's commitment to scholarship, providing the most accurate text plus a wealth of other valuable features, including expert introductions by leading authorities, voluminous notes to clarify the text, up-to-date bibliographies for further study, and much more.

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 entrapment in a loveless marriage. He falls in love with his unconventional cousin, Sue Bridehead, and their refusal to marry when free to do so confirms their rejection of and by the world around them. The shocking fate that overtakes them is an indictment of a rigid and uncaring society. This is the first truly critical edition, taking account of the changes that Hardy made over twenty-five years. Hardy's last, and most controversial novel, this revised edition has the first truly critical text, a new chronology and bibliography, and substantially revised notes.

About the Series: For over 100 years Oxford World's Classics has made available the broadest spectrum of literature from around the globe. Each affordable volume reflects Oxford's commitment to scholarship, providing the most accurate text plus a wealth of other valuable features, including expert introductions by leading authorities, voluminous notes to clarify the text, up-to-date bibliographies for further study, and much more.

The tragic story of Michael Henchard and his painful quest to be forgotten-an unforgettable tale of love, greed, and loss.

THIS ENRICHED CLASSIC EDITION INCLUDES:

? A concise introduction that gives the reader important background information
? A chronology of the author's life and work
? A timeline of significant events that provides the book's historical context
? An outline of key themes to guide the reader's own interpretations
? Detailed explanatory notes
? Critical analysis, including contemporary and modern perspectives on the work
? Discussion questions to promote lively classroom and book group interaction
? A list of recommended related books and films to broaden the reader's experience

Enriched Classics offer readers affordable editions of great works of literature enhanced by helpful notes and insightful commentary. The scholarship provided in Enriched Classics enables readers to appreciate, understand, and enjoy the world's finest books to their full potential.

Young Tess Durbeyfield attempts to restore her family's fortunes by claiming their connection with the aristocratic d'Urbervilles. But Alec d'Urberville is a rich wastrel who seduces her and makes her life miserable. When Tess meets Angel Clare, she is offered true love and happiness, but her past catches up with her and she faces an agonizing moral choice.
Hardy's indictment of society's double standards, and his depiction of Tess as 'a pure woman,' caused controversy in his day and has held the imagination of readers ever since. Hardy thought it his finest novel, and Tess the most deeply felt character he ever created. This unique critical text is taken from the authoritative Clarendon edition, which is based on the manuscript collated with all Hardy's subsequent revisions.

About the Series: For over 100 years Oxford World's Classics has made available the broadest spectrum of literature from around the globe. Each affordable volume reflects Oxford's commitment to scholarship, providing the most accurate text plus a wealth of other valuable features, including expert introductions by leading authorities, voluminous notes to clarify the text, up-to-date bibliographies for further study, and much more.

The life of a simple country girl in nineteenth-century England is destroyed by her father's determination to use her in order to regain the family's former social standing.

Michael Henchard, a callous grain merchant and mayor of the town of Casterbridge, finds that his cruel actions in the past, including his drunken sale of his wife and baby, have come back to haunt him. Reissue.