Showing results by author "Thomas Hardy" in All Categories

Sexually innocent Jude Fawley is trapped into marriage by seductive Arabella Donn, but their union is an unhappy one and Arabella leaves him. Jude's welcome freedom allows him to pursue his obsession with his pretty cousin Sue Bridehead, a brilliant, charismatic free-thinker who would be his ideal soul-mate if not for her aversion to physical love. When Jude and Sue decide to lead their lives outside marriage they bring down on themselves all the force of a repressive society.

The finest voices reading a wonderful selection of poetry accompanied by selected classical music.

Tess Durbeyfield, the daughter of an impoverished family, must navigate a world of desire and romance once she meets Alec d'Urberville. The son of a rich widow, he takes a fancy to her and gets her a position as the poultry keeper on his family's estate. However, her good fortune is soon complicated by Alec's libertine ways, and Tess returns home shamed. Once recovered, she separates herself from the gossip by finding work at a dairy farm outside the village.

The story of Tess, daughter of a poor peddler, is one of heartbreak and sorrow, deception and indecency. When sent to live with a wealthy family, the D'Urbervilles, who are not who they appear to be, Tess endures many hardships and abuse, while trying to make a fortune with the family to whom she believes she is related to. The abuse leads to her getting pregnant by a man named Alec.

The turn of the 20th century saw radical developments in all art forms and particularly in poetry. The first volume of this series features the work of nine significant poets whose careers cover the period from the late 19th century to the early 20th century.

A wonderful anthology of fifteen of the great classic Novellas. 1. Immensee by Theodor Storm 2. The Jew's Beech Tree by Annette von Droste-Hülshoff 3. The Secret Sharer by Joseph Conrad 4. The Withered Arm by Thomas Hardy 5. Mad Monkton by Wilkie Collins 6. The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson 7. The Lifted Veil by George Eliot 8. England my England by D. H. Lawrence

Tess of the d'Urbervilles is the 19th century novel lately thought to be one of the inspirations of E .L.James' Fifty Shades of Grey. It depicts the life of an impressionable, naive, somewhat educated young woman who yearns to be free to live her own life, but finds herself constricted by the bonds of the sexual, religious and socially hypocritical customs that have surrounded her from birth.

Christmas brings out the best and the worst in us, as can been seen in this evocative anthology. Among what Thomas Love Peacock calls the "many poetical charms in the heraldings of Christmas," there are eulogies by saints and diatribes from curmudgeons. Here, Christmas is expounded by divines, sung by rustics, deplored by philosophers, made mystical in stories and summed up in a line by the poet Elizabeth Jennings: "The hush, the star, the baby, people being kind again."

Tess, the young and lovely heroine of Hardy's classic tale, knows instinctively that the path she is choosing is the wrong one. But, a child of her times, what can she do but follow the dictates of her family?

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.

On her morning journey to earn money for her impoverished family, Tess' horse has an accident, forcing her to seek assistance from some newly rich relatives. There, she is vigorously pursued by Alec, who corners her in a field one night and takes advantage of her.

Many giants of literature originate from the shores of the emerald isles: Shakespeare, Dickens, Chaucer, the Brontes, and Austen, to which most people would willingly add the name Thomas Hardy. Far from the Madding Crowd, Tess of the D’Urbervilles, and The Mayor of Casterbridge are but three of his literary masterpieces. But let us go further and add to his canon his poems....

A bold new dramatisation of Thomas Hardy’s classic, giving his story a 21st-century resonance. Tess Durbeyfield is driven by poverty to claim kinship with the wealthy D'Urberville family. But meeting her cousin Alec proves to be her downfall. This classic criticism of social convention is given a new treatment in this full-cast adaptation which blows away the shepherd's pipe and heritage stereotype, foregrounding Hardy's social and sexual radicalism.

Socially critical and emotionally complex, Tess of the d'Urbervilles is Hardy's masterpiece. It tells the story of Tess Durbeyfield, forced by her family's poverty to claim kinship with the wealthy d'Urbervilles. Violated by the son, Alec, her hopes of rebuilding her life with the gentle and bookish Angel Clare founder when he learns of her past.

Timeless poetry for moments of reflection and contemplation. The masters of literature brought together in this unique program.

Subtitled 'A Story of To-day', A Laodicean occupies a unique place in the Thomas Hardy canon. Departing from pre-industrial Wessex, Hardy brings his themes of social constraint, fate, chance and miscommunication to the very modern world of the 1880s - complete with falsified telegraphs, fake photographs, and perilous train tracks. The story follows the life of Paula Power, heiress of her late father's railroad fortune and the new owner of the medieval Castle Stancy. With the castle in need of restoration, Paula employs architect George Somerset, who soon falls in love with her.

Working-class Jude Fawley longs to be a scholar. But after scheming local girl Arabella Donn traps him in marriage, Jude finds his university dreams drifting away. When his wife abandons him, a window of opportunity opens, and Jude moves to Christminster to work as a stonemason - his eye still on his studies. Then he falls in love with the modern-minded Sue Bridehead, and his descent into scandal, tragedy, and ruin truly begins. Shunned by society and the church, the outcasts find themselves on the brink of despair.

Drunk on rum at a country fair, Henchard sells his wife to a sailor for five guineas. Unable to find them and overcome with guilt and remorse he vows to be teetotal for 21 years. Many years later his wife seeks him out in Casterbridge, where he has gained both wealth and the well respected position of mayor.

In the remote wildness of Egdon Heath, the crossed love affairs and marriages of a small group of people are played out against the background of nature’s beauty and indifference to mankind. Through a series of vivid incidents and encounters, The Return of the Native moves in a relentless drive towards tragedy, as the plans and dreams of the lovers miscarry, defeated by chance, or destiny or self-deception. In their unhappy stories, Hardy gives us a powerful dramatization of his bleak philosophy, his belief in man’s helplessness before the malevolence of the universe.

Set in Egdon Heath, a wild tract of country in the southwest of England, this is a masterpiece of dramatic tension. Clym Yeobright, a diamond merchant in Paris, returns to his home in Egdon, where he falls passionately in love with the sensuous, free-spirited Eustacia Vye. She, while in a brief state of infatuation, marries him, hoping he will take her away to a more exciting life in Paris. But Eustacia's dreams of escape are not to be realized.