Wessex Tales

Wessex Tales was the first collection of Hardy's short stories, and they reflect the experience of a novelist at the height of his powers. These seven tales, in which characters and scenes are imbued with a haunting realism, show considerable diversity of content, form and style, and range from fantasy to realism and from tragedy to comedy. In insisting on the unusual nature of any story worth the telling, and with his gift for irony and compassion, Hardy achieves more in the genre of the short story than any English novelist before him.

牛虻

诗经

巴别塔之犬

追风筝的人

Book Description
The Wordsworth Classics covers a huge list of beloved works of literature in English and translations. This growing series is rigorously updated, with scholarly introductions and notes added to new titles.

This was the first collection of Hardy's short stories, and they reflect his experience of being a novelist. It comprises seven stories, in which characters and scenes are imbued with haunting realism. They demonstrate a diversity of content, form and style, and range from fantasy to comedy.

From Library Journal
Hardy tests the skill of any narrator. Not only must the reader dramatize differences of age, sex, region, and class among the characters who inhabit the fictional county of Wessex in the last century, but the straight narration must also showcase the eloquence of Hardy's prose. Vincent Brimble manages all this with ease. Which is fortunate, since the seven uneven tales here might seem downright dull in print. The first and best piece, "The Three Strangers," pulls out all the stops: a violent storm on the downs, three mysterious strangers who seek shelter in a shepherd's cabin where a rousing christening party is in progress, and the booming of a cannon to announce the escape of a prisoner nearby. In other stories (e.g., "Fellow Townsmen") the characters seem wooden, with plots turning too much on coincidence. Woven through all, however, are lively descriptions of life in Somerset 50 years or so before Hardy's time: accounts of milking cows all day in a dark dairy ("The Withered Arm"), smuggling tubs of brandy over the cliffs ("The Distracted Preacher"), and preparing for the anticipated invasion of Napoleon ("A Tradition of 1804"). Recommended for classic literature collections.
　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　Jo Carr, Sarasota, Fla.

Book Dimension :
length: (cm)19.8 　　　 　　　　　 　　　　　 width:(cm)12.6

INTRODUCTION
PREFACE
THE THREE STRANGERS
A TRADITION OF EIGHTEEN HUNDRED AND FOUR
THE MELANCHOLY HUSSAR OF THE GERMAN LEGION
THE WITHERED ARM
A Lorn Milkmaid
The Young Wife
A Vision
A Suggestion
Conjuror Trendle
A Second Attempt
A Ride
A WatersideHermit
A Rencounter
FELLOW-TOWNSMEN
INTERLOPERS AT THE KNAP
THE DISTRACTED PREACHER
How His Cold Was Cured
How He Saw Two Other Men
The Mysterious Greatcoat
At the Time of the New Moon
How They Went to Lulwind Cove
The Great Search at Nether-Moynton
The Walk to Warm"ell Cross; and Afterwards
NOTES