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The "Distracted Preacher" and Other Tales (English Library)
 
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The "Distracted Preacher" and Other Tales (English Library) (Paperback)

by Thomas Hardy (Author)
5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
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Price For All Three: £24.20

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Product details

  • Paperback: 368 pages
  • Publisher: Penguin Classics (30 Jun 2005)
  • Language English
  • ISBN-10: 0140431241
  • ISBN-13: 978-0140431247
  • Product Dimensions: 19.6 x 12.7 x 2.3 cm
  • Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
  • Amazon.co.uk Sales Rank: 245,706 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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    #69 in  Books > Fiction > The Classics > Hardy, Thomas

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Product Description

Product Description

The darkly passionate short stories of Thomas Hardy are compelling explorations of love, social class, superstition and legend. This collection contains many of his finest and most representative, and includes ‘The Withered Arm’, an eerie depiction of arcane witchcraft in nineteenth-century England; ‘Barbara of the House of Grebe’, in which a beautiful man’s tragic disfigurement by fire is savagely exploited by his rival; ‘The Son’s Veto’, showing the cruelty of an educated youth towards his ignorant but tender mother; and ‘The Distracted Preacher’, the story of one man’s conflict between heartfelt love and his own sense of moral and civic duty. By turns moving and poetic, and surprisingly modern and brutally macabre, these eloquent tales may be numbered among the greatest creations of Hardy’s genius.


About the Author

Thomas Hardy was born on 2 June 1840. He wrote novels and poetry, much of which is set in the semi-imaginary county of Wessex. His novels include <I>Far From the Madding Crowd</I> (1874), <I>The Return of the Native </I>(1878), <I>The Mayor of Casterbridge</I> (1886), <I>Tess</I> o<I>f the D'Urbervilles</I>(1891) and <I>Jude the Obscure</I> (1895). He published his first volume of poetry, <I>Wessex Poems,</I> in 1898 and continued to publish collections of poems until his death on 11 January 1928.

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The "Distracted Preacher" and Other Tales (English Library)
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The Fiddler of the Reels and Other Stories, 1888-1900 (Penguin Classics)
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Customer Reviews

2 Reviews
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1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars quirky stories by a master, 5 Jan 2007
By Mr. Ian A. Macfarlane "almac1975" (Fife, Scotland) - See all my reviews
(TOP 100 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   
These stories by the master of late 19th.-century rural gloom are most enjoyable. Some have their origin in tales the young Hardy heard from his grandmother, and are set well before his own time. Others deal with historical events seen from the perspective of ordinary people. They mingle quaintness, humour and the macabre, and as always with Hardy, irony is a strong player too. They are all beautifully written and have great character and individuality. They have as much appeal now as they did when they were first published and can be strongly recommended.
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5.0 out of 5 stars Hardy delves into the darkness of the Wessex past..., 20 Sep 2008
By London9087 (England) - See all my reviews
A really fantastic read. I think that this is a great way to get acquainted with Thomas Hardy if you haven't you had a chance to read his novels in full, especially as your feelings on this volume will let you know whether or not you're going to like his longer works! These stories are engaging, dark, sometimes humourous and extremely poetic. To me, they speak of a past that was simple and earthy, but also- perhaps surprisingly- rooted in almost pagan beliefs.
Unlike other short story writers, Hardy often seems irritated by the daunting task of trying to condense what could be a novel into a short story. Almost as though he is being asked to build a doll's house from the plan for a stately home. That rather cumbersome style of his (which I love) is plainly in evidence here, hard as he must have tried to curb it.
These stories are imaginative however, they are also extremely evocative of another time in rural England. I could hardly bear to set this book down once I had picked it up, and was so engaged that I hardly paused between the end of one story and the beginning of the other.
Hardy appears to be writing in order to preserve some sort of oral tradition of the time. He often writes that 'this is a story told to me by an old lady who knew the heroine of this tale', and that sort of thing. In a sense, these stories seem less to be the invention of the writer himself, than the received wisdom of the past, told with smoothness and grace by a gifted storyteller.
All in all, a wonderful, if at times tragic, read. You really will race through these- and if Hardy sometimes fails in the short-story brief, he never fails to entertain. Lovers of Hardy will enjoy seeing their hero working his magic on a smaller stage, while newcomers will be thrilled by the fabulous plots and the magnetic characters.
'On the Western Circuit' is, quite simply, a masterpiece, and there are many jems in this lovely little volume.
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