Thomas Hardy Libri

Dalle vastità remote della brughiera, spazio aperto e selvaggio, percorso da luci livide e crepuscolari, trae origine l'energia di questa storia, un'intricata successione di colpi di scena, matrimoni promessi e non celebrati, tradimenti e inganni. Perché, sembra dire Hardy, per raccontare le cadute vertiginose dell'animo umano non serve addentrarsi nelle pieghe delle città. Non solo, proprio dove la natura regna incontrastata è più facile incontrare i riti, le tradizioni e le forze ancestrali che giocano con il destino umano. Soprattutto se si tratta di uomini e donne dell'Inghilterra del XIX secolo.

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. Subtitled ‘A Story of a Man of Character’, Hardy’s powerful and sympathetic study of the heroic but deeply flawed Henchard is also an intensely dramatic work, tragically played out against the vivid backdrop of a close-knit Dorsetshire town.

This collection presents five classic horror stories that delve into themes of unsettling dread and the unknown. Each tale, from Grant Allen's eerie "Pallinghurst Barrow" to H.P. Lovecraft's chilling "The Very Old Folk," explores the darker aspects of human experience. Notable works like Arthur Machen's "The Great God Pan" and Thomas Hardy's "The Withered Arm" contribute to an atmosphere of suspense and terror, ensuring a sleepless night for readers seeking the macabre.

The phrase `life's little ironies' is now proverbial, but it was coined by Hardy as the title for this, his third volume of short stories. While the tales and sketches reflect many of the strengths and themes of the great novels, they are powerful works in their own right. Unified by his quintessential irony, strong visual sense, and engaging characters, they deal with the tragic and the humorous, the metaphysical and the magical. The collection displays the whole range of Hardy's art as a writer of fiction, from fantasy to uncompromising realism, and from the loving re-creation of a vanished rural world to the repressions of fin-de-siecle bourgeois life.

Five novels are augmented by a biographical introduction and enhanced with contemporary photographs of the Wessex landscape

A portrayal of a picturesque rural society, tinged with gentle humour and irony, it is Hardy's most bright, confident and optimistic novel.