Tess of the DUrbervilles

Part of Penguin’s beautiful hardback Clothbound Classics series, designed by the award-winning Coralie Bickford-Smith, these delectable and collectible editions are bound in high-quality colourful, tactile cloth with foil stamped into the design. When Tess Durbeyfield is driven by family poverty to claim kinship with the wealthy D’Urbervilles and seek a portion of their family fortune, 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. With its sensitive depiction of the wronged Tess and powerful criticism of social convention, Tess of the D’Urbervilles is one of the most moving and poetic of Hardy’s novels.

Editorial Reviews

„Like the greatest characters in literature, Tess lives beyond the final pages of the book as a permanent citizen of the imagination . . . Tess is that rare creature in literature: goodness made interesting.“ -Irving Howe, author, World of Our Fathers

„Has a lush sensuality about the heat of summer and the heat of lust which makes the gorgeousness of Hardy’s heroine and his country of Wessex both seems utterly desirable as the tale of tragic fate unfolds.“ -The Times
– From the Publisher

„The second edition of Tess of the d’Urbervilles by Sarah E. Maier brings together a wealth of contextual materials, contemporary reviews, extracts from Hardy’s notebooks, and nineteenth-century debates about women, inviting the reader to respond to the challenge of the novel’s subtitle: ‘A Pure Woman Faithfully Presented.’ It reprints two separately published stories, ‘Saturday Night in Arcady’ and ‘The Midnight Baptism,’ which Hardy salvaged from the expurgated text published in the Graphic and reinstated in the three-volume edition of 1891. Meticulously annotated and impressively documented, this new edition will be indispensable to students and scholars alike.“
– Joanne Shattock Victorian Studies Centre