Showing results by author "Thomas Hardy" in All Categories

Plug in and prepare for your A-Level English Literature examination with this comprehensive audio study guide to Tess of the D'Urbervilles. Includes the entire, unabridged audio narration of Tess of the D'Urbervilles, as well as in-depth analysis on the text, covering the key areas of: Characters, Themes, Structure and Form, Historical Context and Popular Criticism - as well as detailed chapter summaries and key quotations for your exam.

Jocelyn Pierston, a successful sculptor, is helpless in the face of "the well-beloved": the manifestation of perfect womanhood that seems to move like a will-o'-the-wisp from one acquaintance to the next. It shapes his whole life. Where his artistry involves permanence - cold stone objects - his heart is caught by ephemeral beauty. After years spent in London, a return to his rocky birthplace, the Isle of Slingers, sparks Pierston's extraordinary involvement with three generations of the Caro family.

At this time of the year, as the nights close in and the temperature drops, winter seems like a season that nobody really enjoys, and we look forward all the more to spring. For many children, however, it is the bounty of Christmas that steals their attention, and for others the renewal of the New Year. But for Nature it is a pause for breath, to take stock of what has gone by in the year to date and ready herself for the energies and dramatic development to the landscape that spring will bring.

Thomas Hardy brings us an England that once existed but no more. It is rural, traditional, pastoral - a society of mannered conduct that flows like a deep river where powerful currents eddy and swirl. In this powerful novel of love and disillusion, Hardy's heroine is torn between the three men in her life. Passionate but capricious, her romantic involvements have fascinated generations of readers.

Lonely Viviette Constantine awaits the return of her husband from a hunting expedition to Africa. She becomes involved with a young astronomer, Swithin St.Cleeve, who observes the night sky from a disused tower on her estate. Despite their differing ages and social backgrounds they soon find their destinies linked - but with fateful consequences.

Tess Durbeyfield, the daughter of an impoverished family, must navigate a world of desire and romance once she meets Alec d'Urberville. The son of a rich widow, he takes a fancy to her and gets her a position as the poultry keeper on his family's estate. However, her good fortune is soon complicated by Alec's libertine ways, and Tess returns home shamed. Once recovered, she separates herself from the gossip by finding work at a dairy farm outside the village.

"Tess of the d'Urbervilles" by Thomas Hardy is a tragic tale of love, betrayal, and societal injustice. This podcast unpacks the life of Tess, a young woman whose fate is shaped by the rigid moral standards and hypocrisy of Victorian society. A deep dive into themes of innocence, guilt, and human suffering.

Michael Redgrave presents one of Thomas Hardy's most popular novels, which takes place entirely in the environs of Egdon Heath and covers exactly a year and a day.

On her morning journey to earn money for her impoverished family, Tess' horse has an accident, forcing her to seek assistance from some newly rich relatives. There, she is vigorously pursued by Alec, who corners her in a field one night and takes advantage of her.

In a fit of drunken anger, Michael Henchard sells his wife and baby daughter for five guineas at a country fair. Over the course of the following years, he manages to establish himself as a respected and prosperous pillar of the community of Casterbridge, but behind his success there always lurk the shameful secret of his past and a personality prone to self-destructive pride and temper. Hardy’s powerful and sympathetic study of the heroic but deeply flawed Henchard is also an intensely dramatic work.

collection of favorite classic poems by some of our best loved poets, including Robert Browning, Rudyard Kipling, Thomas Hardy, John Keats, William Butler Yeats, Thomas Love Peacock, Alfred Lord Tennyson, William Shakespeare, Algernon Charles Swinburne, and others.

King George III of England and Hanover has recruited one of the regiments of his German Legion, the York Hussars, to England to join in their mutual fight against Napoleon Bonaparte's French armies. Stationed on the Dorset Downs, Corporal Matthäus Tina, of the York Hussars, aged 22, is beset by a melancholic homesickness for his native home town of Saarbrück, where his mother still lives.

Michael Pennington reads the much-loved classic by Thomas Hardy. Hardy called this story "a deadly war waged between flesh and spirit". It is a tale of doomed love and unfulfilled promise that revolves around Jude Fawley, an ambitious and intelligent young man, his cousin Sue Bridehead, and his academic mentor Phillotson.

The British Classics Collection: Volume One is a century-spanning collection of 24 classic works of fiction and poetry by British authors, read by a cast of incredible narrators including Stephen Fry, Joanne Froggatt, Jason Isaacs, Adjoa Andoh, and many more. Included here are stories by some of the greatest writers of all time, including Charles Dickens; Emily Brontë; Jane Austen; Thomas Hardy; George Eliot; D.H. Lawrence; and Mary Shelley, amongst a host of others.

A scintillating collection of tales with unexpected endings.

Tess of the d'Urbervilles is the 19th century novel lately thought to be one of the inspirations of E .L.James' Fifty Shades of Grey. It depicts the life of an impressionable, naive, somewhat educated young woman who yearns to be free to live her own life, but finds herself constricted by the bonds of the sexual, religious and socially hypocritical customs that have surrounded her from birth.

Bathsheba Everdene is young, proud, and beautiful. She is an independent woman and can marry any man she chooses - if she chooses. In fact, she likes her independence, and she likes fighting her own battles in a man’s world. But it is never wise to ignore the power of love. There are three men who would very much like to marry Bathsheba. When she falls in love with one of them, she soon wishes she had kept her independence.

Thomas Hardy wrote this engaging seasonal story for The Father Christmas Annual in 1877, which was very early in his career. One can just imagine the family sitting by the fireside after the big Christmas lunch, and listening as one member of the family read the story (set in the Wessex countryside he knew so well). By this time, he was already making his mark as a writer. One of his greatest achievements, Far From the Madding Crowd was published three years earlier. The Thieves Who Couldn't Stop Sneezing was probably an enjoyable diversion for Hardy from serious and much longer novels.

A collection of the funny, curious verse written during the 19th and 20th centuries, read by some of Britain's most renowned actors. Humorous and whimsical verse are collated together in these timeless readings of poetry from our funniest writers. Performed by Sir John Gielgud; Imogen Stubbs; Tim Pigott-Smith; Peter Orr; Wendy Hillier.

In "The Hand of Ethelberta", Thomas Hardy explores the complexities of love and class in Victorian England through the story of a young woman who rises from being a governess to marrying into the aristocracy. With his signature wit and insight, Hardy delves into themes of social mobility, gender roles, and the power of love to transcend societal expectations. The audiobook brings this delightful tale to life, immersing the listener in the richly detailed world of 19th-century England.