Thomas Hardy

The Well Beloved

• Broschiertes Buch

Produktbeschreibung

The Well-Beloved is a story of one man's obsessive search for the perfect woman. Jocelyn Pierston is a sculptor. All his life he has been haunted by an image of beauty - the 'well-beloved' - which he yearns for both as an artist and as a lover. Glimpses of her are fleeting, as different women seem to embody this ideal for a time; Pierston grasps but cannot hold his well-beloved. His lifelong search leads to his courtship of three generations of women on the Isle of Slingers (an evocative rendering of the real-life English island of Portland). The last of Thomas Hardy's novels to be published, The Well-Beloved is a haunting meditation on art and life.

Produktdetails

• Verlag: Akasha Classics
• Seitenzahl: 220
• Erscheinungstermin: 12. März 2009
• Englisch
• Abmessung: 216mm x 140mm x 14mm
• Gewicht: 317g
• ISBN-13: 9781605124537
• ISBN-10: 1605124532
• Artikelnr.: 26124953

Autorenporträt

Thomas Hardy (1840 - 1928) was an English novelist and poet. A Victorian realist in the tradition of George Eliot, he was influenced both in his novels and in his poetry by Romanticism, especially William Wordsworth. He was highly critical of much in Victorian society, though Hardy focused more on a declining rural society. While Hardy wrote poetry throughout his life and regarded himself primarily as a poet, his first collection was not published until 1898. Initially, therefore, he gained fame as the author of such novels as Far from the Madding Crowd (1874), The Mayor of Casterbridge (1886), Tess of the d'Urbervilles (1891), and Jude the Obscure (1895). During his lifetime, Hardy's poetry was acclaimed by younger poets (particularly the Georgians) who viewed him as a mentor. After his death his poems were lauded by Ezra Pound, W. H. Auden and Philip Larkin. Many of his novels concern tragic characters struggling against their passions and social circumstances and they are often set in the semi-fictional region of Wessex; initially based on the medieval Anglo-Saxon kingdom, Hardy's Wessex eventually came to include the counties of Dorset, Wiltshire, Somerset, Devon, Hampshire and much of Berkshire, in southwest and south central England. He destroyed the manuscript of his first, unplaced novel, but -- encouraged by mentor and friend George Meredith -- tried again. His important work took place in an area of southern England he called Wessex, named after the English kingdom that existed before the Norman Conquest.