DownloadThe Portobello Bookshop Gift Guide 2024

Tess of the D'Urbervilles

Thomas Hardy author Tim Dolin editor Margaret Higonnet editor

Format:Paperback

Publisher:Penguin Books Ltd

Published:30th Jan '03

Should be back in stock very soon

This paperback is available in another edition too:

Tess of the D'Urbervilles cover

'The greatest tragic writer among the English novelists' Virginia Woolf

With its depiction of the wronged 'pure woman' Tess and its powerful criticism of Victorian hypocrisy, Tess of the D'Urbervilles is one of the most moving and poetic of Hardy's novels. When its heroine, Tess Durbeyfield, is driven by family poverty to claim kinship with the wealthy D'Urbervilles, meeting her 'cousin' Alec proves to be her downfall. A very different man, Angel Clare, seems to offer her love and salvation, but Tess must choose whether to reveal her past or remain silent in the hope of a peaceful future.

Edited with notes by TIM DOLIN and an Introduction by MARGARET R. HIGONNET

“[Tess of the D’Urbervilles is] Hardy’s finest, most complex and most notorious novel . . . The novel is not a mere plea for compassion for the eternal victim, though that is the banner it flies. It also involves a profound questioning of contemporary morality.” –from the Introduction by Patricia Ingham

  • Runner-up for The BBC Big Read Top 100 2003
  • Short-listed for BBC Big Read Top 100 2003

ISBN: 9780141439594

Dimensions: 197mm x 130mm x 25mm

Weight: 406g

592 pages