Wessex Tales

In this, his first collection of short stories, Hardy sought to record thelegends, superstitions, local customs, and lore of a Wessex that was rapidlypassing out of memory. But these tales also portray the social and economicstresses of 1880s Dorset, and reveal Hardy's growing scepticism about thepossibility of achieving personal and sexual satisfaction in the modern world.By turns humorous, ironic, macabre, and elegiac, these seven stories show therange of Hardy's story-telling genius. The critically established text, thefirst to be based on detailed study of all revised texts, presents manuscriptreadings which have never before appeared in print. The stories include TheThree Strangers; A Tradition of Eighteen Hundred and Four; The Melancholy Hussarof the German Legion; The Withered Arm; Fellow-Townsmen; Interlopers at theKnap; The Distracted PreacherHardy, Thomas is the author of 'Wessex Tales', published 1998 under ISBN 9780192835581 and ISBN 0192835580.