The Return of the Native - Thomas Hardy - 9780099518983

[html]"Tremendous...utterly absorbing" - Independent Proud, passionate Eustacia Vye marries Clym Yeobright in the hope that he will help her escape her cramped rural existence. But when their relationship falters and her old lover Damon Wildeve reappears with an unexpected inheritance, Eustacia is faced with a series of decisions upon which multiple lives depend. In a world where misunderstandings can be fatal, Hardy’s atmospheric tragedy moves inevitably towards a disastrous climax on the brooding wilds of Egdon Heath."Hardy's novels hold a Shakespearean power of creating a unique world, The Return of the Native is . . . thoughtful, valedictory, poetic, tinged with the somberness of an uncertainty which seems to well up from the depths of the author's own subconscious . . . Hardy's sense of the tragic life of human beings, mere small fragments of consciousness in a vast uncaring universe, comes directly from his own youthful awareness of the place and circumstances described in the novel" - John Bayley "Throbs with a very Victorian sense of geologies, pre-histories and even astronomy; you can feel the planet moving under the feet" - Daily Telegraph "Inimitably brooding style" - The Times "Besides my complete identification with its heroine, I loved the sheer relentless power of the writing." - Maeve Haran, Independent "Splendid" - Daily TelegraphThomas Hardy was born in Dorset in 1840 and became an apprentice architect at the age of sixteen. He spent his twenties in London, where he wrote his first poems. In 1867 Hardy returned to his native Dorset, whose rugged landscape was a great source of inspiration for his writing. Between 1871 and 1897 he wrote fourteen novels, including Tess of the D'Urbervilles and Jude the Obscure. This final work was received savagely; thereafter Hardy turned away from novels and spent the last thirty year of his life focusing on poetry. He died in 1928.[/html]