About this title: Hardy's novel begins with the famous scene in which Michael Henchard, a young farmer, gets drunk at a village fair and sells his wife and baby daughter to a passing sailor for five guineas. The consequences of this impulsive act are regrettable and far-reaching, and culminate in Henchard's ruin and his death in obscurity as a lonely old man. ...
read more
Note: This is a general synopsis. Each listing is described below.
Binding: Trade paperback
Publisher: Penguin Books
Date Published: 1978
ISBN-13:9780140051032ISBN:0140051031
Description: Good. No dust jacket as issued. slight yellowing of pages from age. Trade paperback (US). Glued binding. Audience: General/trade.438 pages read more
Binding: Trade paperback
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
Date Published: 2006
ISBN-13:9780192817280ISBN:0192817280
Description: Fine. No dust jacket as issued. Excellent clean copy very minor shelf wear, first page price stamped. Trade paperback (US). Glued binding. 462 p. Oxford World's Classics (Paperback). Audience: General/trade. read more
Binding: Mass Market Paperback
Publisher: Signet Classic, New York
Date Published: 1984
ISBN-13:9780451525192ISBN:0451525191
Description: Good. No Jacket. 12mo-over 6¾"-7¾" tall. The book is very solid with underlining and margin notes. A previous owner's name is written on the inside of the front cover. The cover has minor shelf wear & moderate edge wear. The spine has a light crease. read more
Binding: Mass-market paperback
Publisher: Signet Book
Date Published: 1999
ISBN-13:9780451527356ISBN:0451527356
Description: Very good. No dust jacket as issued. Cover has very minor wear, pages are unmarked. Mass market (rack) paperback. Glued binding. 370 p. Signet Classics (Paperback). Audience: General/trade. read more
"I first read this book at school as a part of the curriculum. God knows what they're forced to read now. I read it again recently on one of my regular trips down memory lane, as I find reading a book you haven't picked up in a long time brings with it a whole complex of memories that had lain dormant. I enjoyed it even more the second time round. It has less tedious descriptive passages than Far From the Madding Crowd, say, and you can really feel for the characters, especially of course the Mayor, Michael Henchard, who long ago sold his wife at a fair and now has to face ruin as the past catches up with him in the form of his daughter and his enemy Farfrae. Fast-paced."
"I read this book while discovering Hardy (and many particularity of its language). From my french background, it was both surprising and also gave me familiarity with a place I do not know much: rural england. The morale of life remains untethered, in spite of the tension between the two mayors (one among many subtle ambiguities in this book) being almost Manichean. What is good, what is bad, and how life chooses, and how we choose our life. Dropped in a period that faded away (even as Hardy was writing), becoming quickly intemporal, this story reminds of Atridian tragedy, bigger than life character.
"Alright, so after I read this novel I finally realised what people in the pre-television era used in place of soap operas. I just couldn't handle the overly over melodrama of this story. The author seems very fond of creating a bang upon another bang. Don't get me wrong I like drama in general but too much of anything is bad for you, or at least that is what I believe.
The idea of the antagonistic Fate imposing its dire revenge on those who transgress both the limits of society and family, is a little far fetched. I do believe that people in who do wrong in this world are made to suffer for their deeds sometimes in this world. But to say a retribution in this life could take a toll of this magnanimous scale seemed to me a little too surreal.
Nevertheless, the tragic aspect was a appealing in the end, although all te damage that Hardy had caused to his own story remained unmendable, resulting in the overshadowing of the beauty of the ending by the horridness of the drama in the rest of the novel."
"HATE! HATE! If the author doesn't even care what happens to his characters, how are we supposed to? The plot is obscenely contrived and moralistic. The verbiage is absurdly disinterested; at one point, I believe a character fleeing for her life is actually described as "earnestly" climbing a haystack as she tries to escape a mad bull. EARNESTLY? In high school, we had to read this and write an essay arguing whether the book was a tragedy or a comedy. I wrote that the tragedy was that in the fact that the book had ever been written. I still stand by that."
We guarantee every item's condition, as described on Alibris. If you are not satisfied that an item is as described, return your purchase for a refund.
rating
