Having accepted the suit of Captain, Paula discovers that his illegitimate son has hatched a plot against Somerset, and so does not go through with the marriage. Instead she finally marries Somerset, but her castle home is burned to the ground, and she re
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 t
Thomas Hardy's first love was poetry. It was not until 1898, when he was 58, that his first book of poetry, Wessex Poems was published. For the final years of his life he abandoned fiction and devoted himself entirely to poetry; he is now not only regarde
Chosen by Garison Keillor for his readings on public radio's The Writer's Almanac, the 185 poems in this follow-up to his acclaimed anthology Good Poems are perfect for our troubled times. Here, readers will find solace in works that are bracing and coura
Treasury of over 170 English and American sonnets by more than 70 poets, from the Renaissance to the 20th century. Shakespeare's "Shall I Compare Thee to a Summer's Day?", Milton's "On His Blindness," Wordsworth's "The World Is Too Much with Us," many mor
Adventuress and opportunist, Ethelberta reinvents herself to disguise her humble origins, launching a brilliant career as a society poet in London with her family acting incognito as her servants. Turning the male-dominated literary world to her advantage
In addition to his great "Wessex Novels," Thomas Hardy wrote Wessex Tales (1896), a collection of six stories written in the 1880s and 1890s that, for the most part, are as bleakly ironic and unforgiving as the darkest of his great novels -- Jude the Obsc
"See if she is dark or fair, and if you can, notice if her hands be white; if not, see if they look as though she had ever done housework, or are milker's hands like mine."So Rhoda Brook, the abandoned mistress of Farmer Lodge, is jealous to discover deta
