Jude The Obscure
Condition: SECONDHAND
This is a secondhand book. The jacket image is a photograph of the exact copy we have in stock. This image shows the condition of this book. Further condition remarks are below.
Condition remarks:
Book: Good
Jacket: Slipcase: Good
Pages: Good
Few novels in the English literary canon have provoked as much controversy or carried as much emotional devastation as Thomas Hardy's final and most searing work of fiction. Jude the Obscure chronicles the tragic life of Jude Fawley, an ambitious stonemason from rural England who dreams of academic greatness at the fictional university city of Christminster, only to find his aspirations crushed by rigid class structures, institutional hypocrisy, and the torments of an ill-fated love for his free-spirited cousin, Sue Bridehead. Set against the bleak landscapes of Victorian England, the novel presents a savage indictment of society's constraints on individual freedom, marriage, and intellectual ambition, all rendered with Hardy's characteristic blend of poetic fatalism and unflinching realism. Hardy's prose in Jude the Obscure carries the weight of Greek tragedy, investing its doomed protagonist with a dignity that makes his suffering all the more unbearable. The novel argues passionately against the institutions — marriage, the Church, the class system — that Hardy saw as instruments of human misery, a stance so radical for its time that it scandalized Victorian society and led Hardy to abandon novel-writing altogether. This Folio Society edition, featuring an introduction by the distinguished scholar Samuel Hynes, presents the text with the reverence it deserves, inviting readers to rediscover why Hardy's final word on the human condition remains as piercing and as relevant today as when it first shook the literary world.
Author: Thomas Hardy
Format: Hardback
Published: 1992, The Folio Society, London
Genre: Classic fiction
Condition remarks:
Book: Good
Jacket: Slipcase: Good
Pages: Good
Few novels in the English literary canon have provoked as much controversy or carried as much emotional devastation as Thomas Hardy's final and most searing work of fiction. Jude the Obscure chronicles the tragic life of Jude Fawley, an ambitious stonemason from rural England who dreams of academic greatness at the fictional university city of Christminster, only to find his aspirations crushed by rigid class structures, institutional hypocrisy, and the torments of an ill-fated love for his free-spirited cousin, Sue Bridehead. Set against the bleak landscapes of Victorian England, the novel presents a savage indictment of society's constraints on individual freedom, marriage, and intellectual ambition, all rendered with Hardy's characteristic blend of poetic fatalism and unflinching realism. Hardy's prose in Jude the Obscure carries the weight of Greek tragedy, investing its doomed protagonist with a dignity that makes his suffering all the more unbearable. The novel argues passionately against the institutions — marriage, the Church, the class system — that Hardy saw as instruments of human misery, a stance so radical for its time that it scandalized Victorian society and led Hardy to abandon novel-writing altogether. This Folio Society edition, featuring an introduction by the distinguished scholar Samuel Hynes, presents the text with the reverence it deserves, inviting readers to rediscover why Hardy's final word on the human condition remains as piercing and as relevant today as when it first shook the literary world.