Showing results by author "Hardy Thomas" in All Categories

A collection of the funny, curious verse written during the 19th and 20th centuries, read by some of Britain's most renowned actors. Humorous and whimsical verse are collated together in these timeless readings of poetry from our funniest writers. Performed by Sir John Gielgud; Imogen Stubbs; Tim Pigott-Smith; Peter Orr; Wendy Hillier.

A collection of the greatest war poetry ever written, read by some of the 20th century’s most renowned actors. Tragedy, war and humanity are played out in these timeless readings of poetry written about, or on, the battlefield.

Far from the Madding Crowd is Thomas Hardy's fourth novel. It centers on the lives of five characters: Gabriel Oak, Bathsheba Everdene, Mr. Boldwood, Sgt. Troy, and Fanny Robin. The plot involves love, loyalty, death, and betrayal, and all this is delivered to us in Hardy's most eloquent prose. The images of character and nature are painted for our mind's eye with sublime style.

Here is Thomas Hardy's timeless novel, read by Julie Christie. Far from the Madding Crowd is perhaps the best-known of Hardy's works. The story centres around the beautiful and wilful Bathsheba Everdene, mistress of Weatherbury Upper Farm, and the three men who love her. Hardy combines outstanding description of West Country rural life with a deep sense of romantic passion.

Thomas Hardy offers a quiet meditation on fate, character, and the subtle turns of the human heart. This story reflects Hardy's enduring concern with moral struggle and the slow, often silent shifts within the self.

In The Three Strangers, Thomas Hardy offers a quietly ironic tale shaped by weather, custom, and the unpredictable drift of human fate. Set against the backdrop of rural Wessex, the story unfolds on the border between the ordinary and the uncanny — a place where identity flickers and appearances mislead. With his signature restraint, Hardy lets the narrative circle slowly inward, revealing not only the secret at its heart, but something of the way justice, chance, and character meet in the dark folds of the countryside.

Paula Power, the daughter of a wealthy railway magnate, inherits De Stancy Castle, an ancient castle in need of modernization. She commissions a young architect from London, George Somerset, to undertake the work. Somerset falls in love with Paula. But Paula, the Laodicean of the title, meaning a person who is lukewarm or halfhearted, is torn between George's admiration and that of Captain De Stancy, whose old-world romanticism contrasts with Somerset's forward-looking outlook.

Barbara, a young and impetuous heiress, rejects the stern Lord Uplandtowers to elope with a poor but handsome man, Edmund Willowes. When Barbara's parents send Edmund to Europe, they hope to change him into a more suitable match for their daughter. But after disaster strikes, Edmund returns in a way nobody could have imagined.

A collection of Thomas Hardy's poetry and fiction.

Our greatest fears are of the unknown. Usually we think those fears are in front of us...or behind us. But perhaps the human body itself holds the greatest horror. What happens after death? Do our bodies have a new existence either in whole...or part? Will others seek to claim them and do unspeakable things? We don’t know. But our authors do. And they have the talents and wits to make these diabolical stories vehicles for horror, for terror, for the unimaginable....

A 19th century novel that defied the repressive moral conventions of Victorian England. Young Tess Durbeyfield comes from an impoverished home. Her father, desperate to alleviate the family's financial plight, presses his daughter into work for the wealthy D'Urbervilles. But in doing so, Tess meets the manipulative Alec, who forces himself upon her. And though Tess later meets a kinder man who proposes marriage, her salvation is jeopardized when she reveals to him her troubled past.

The Essential Classics: Volume 1 brings together some of the most astute, gripping and tragic works written in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, beautifully read by Miranda Raison, Pearl Mackie, Jonathan Keeble, Peter Noble, and Olivia Dowd. Spanning English, Russian and German literature, in this collection you will find the terrifying trials of iconic detective Sherlock Holmes, Dickens’s cutting social commentary in Bleak House, as well as classic coming-of-age narratives with The Magic Mountain and Tolstoy’s realist masterpiece in Anna Karenina.

The Essential Classics: Volume 7 brings together 5 of the greatest classics ever written, perfectly read by an esteemed cast including Jonathan Keeble, Kristin Atherton, Emma Gregory, and Matt Bates. From the charming and compassionate world of Cranford to the ambitious and tragic tale of Jude the Obscure, this volume is a rich tapestry of human experience. Daniel Deronda challenges notions of identity, morality, and destiny, while Evelina offers a sharp yet humorous commentary on social class and manners.

A very early novel by Thomas Hardy—beautifully written but obviously written when he was a young man who was curious about why women fall in love and why men feel so mesmerized by them. It really is a charming story and like the more famous stories, it is set in the idyllic countryside of West England. The descriptions of the landscape are very affecting.

Opera complessa e articolata, di grande intensità emotiva, “Tess dei d’Urberville”, dello scrittore e poeta inglese Thomas Hardy (1840/1928), all’epoca fu accusato di sfidare la morale vittoriana, suscitando aspre polemiche. Pubblicato a puntate nel 1891 sulla rivista The Graphic, fu censurato per essere poi ripubblicato in tre volumi nella versione integrale.

A shameful act of drunken impetuousness results in Michael Henchard losing his wife and daughter in an auction. This evil deed remains secret for years, during which time Henchard climbs the social ladder from working as a roving hay-trusser to becoming the upstanding Mayor of Casterbridge.

In this classically simple tale of the disastrous impact of outside life on a secluded community in Dorset, Hardy narrates the rivalry for the hand of Grace Melbury between a simple and loyal woodlander and an exotic and sophisticated outsider. Betrayal, adultery, disillusion, and moral compromise are all worked out in a setting evoked as both beautiful and treacherous.

In a remote corner of early Victorian England, where traditional practices remain untouched by time, Bathsheba Everdene stands out as a beacon of feminine independence and self-reliance. However, when confronted with three suitors, among them the dashing Sergeant Troy, she shows a reckless capriciousness which threatens the stability of the whole community.

‘A dime a dozen’ as known in America, is perhaps equal to the English ‘cheap as chips’ but whatever the lingua franca of your choice in this series we hereby submit ‘A Rhyme a Dozen’ as 12 poems on many given subjects that are a well-rounded gathering, maybe even an essential guide, from the knowing pens of classic poets and their beautifully spoken verse to the comfort of your ears.

Short stories have always been a sort of instant access into an author’s brain, their soul and heart. They can lift our lives into locations, people and experiences with a sweep of landscape, narration, feelings and emotions that is difficult to achieve elsewhere. This decade is resplendent with literature and its many prodigiously talented authors who write on as varied a range of subjects as might be thought possible. Yet each is studded with careful literary precision and narrative verve. It is a remarkable decade.