Wessex Tales (Hardcover)

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 Obscure." But this great novelist began and ended his writing career as a poet. In-between, he wrote a number of books that many readers find emotionally-wrenching, but which are considered among the classics of 19th Century British literature, including "Far from the Madding Crowd, " and "Tess of the D'Urbervilles." Readers will experience Hardy's uncompromising, unsentimental realism in "Wessex Tales, " and for those seeking a taste of the Dorset poet and novelist, they represent an ideal start.