Thomas Hardy (1840-1928) is one of the world's best known and best loved novelists. Collected here in one glorious volume are his three best known and most highly thought of novels.
Hardy was born the son of a Dorset stone mason, and his work as a writer is characterised by his close relationship with the beautiful and mysterious landscape of rural England.
In Tess of the D'Urbervilles, the trusting innocence of a poor young country girl is abused and destroyed, leaving her to pick up the pieces of her vanished honour. Far from the Madding Crowd tells of the stormy life and loves of the beautiful young heiress Bathsheba Everdene, courted by three men whose passions bring violence and scandal to a sleepy rural community. And in The Mayor of Casterbridge past shame returns to haunt the ambitious and successful Michael Henchard - a past in which he cynically sold his own wife.