November 2025: Thomas Hardy

And after a few months of international reading, we are back to England in November to check on Thomas Hardy (1840–1928).

What do you plan to read in November?

PS: Tess of the d'Urbervilles was the first Victorian novel I managed to finish in my teens (we won't discuss how long ago that was) so she and Hardy have a special place in my heart...

I plan to read Wessex Tales by Thomas Hardy. I have never read any of his books, so I am really looking forward to it.

I have always previously read Hardy during or after visits to Dorset, so will have to make this a precedent not to do so. I do like his works, so that is no hardship. So far I have read Casterbridge, Tess and Madding Crowd. I have not yet decided which to read this time round. Not I think Jude the Obscure as my tolerance for particularly depressing books is a bit low at the moment, due to a recent family bereavement.

Maybe one of either The Return of the Native or The Woodlanders or The Hand of Ethelberta.

This year (and into next) I'm participating in a Hardy readalong, reading each of his 14 novels per month, in publication order. Prior to this readalong I had read 8 of his novels, although most of those were read in the 1980s. October's read was new to me: The Hand of Ethelberta, subtitled "A Comedy in Chapters." Not much comedy (a little), but not much misery either. A very strange Hardy, but it does involve a woman (Ethelberta) with 4 different suitors. My thoughts are mixed on it: didn't love it, didn't hate it.

November's read is The Return of the Native, which I read some 40 years ago. I don't remember much, if anything, so I am looking forward to this.

The Hardy novel I've read several times and always enjoy is The Mayor of Casterbridge, although it does have its misery bits. We watch a man work himself up from nothing to become Mayor, but things turn for him when his past comes back into his life. I think this one or Far from the Madding Crowd are good places to start with Hardy.

I have started The Woodlanders and I am enjoying it very much. But this is another author who requires careful and attentive reading, his sentences are often structured unusually. Not to mention unusual vocabulary.

I decided I could not face a full length Hardy novel so I read a novella, An Indiscretion in the Life of an Heiress. This was Hardy’s first published work, though published anonymously. A young man from a tenant farming background is obsessed with the daughter of the landowner. He saves her life, and an understanding grows between them, but she cannot escape her roots and her perceived obligations to her father. Many years later after an enforced separation, they are reunited and elope, but tragedy strikes in the usual Hardy fashion. It is a good study in obsessive and hopeless love, but seems to be overlooked; for example, it is not mentioned in Hardy’s Wikipedia article, which lists numerous obscure short stories and poems, and the fictional locations mentioned in the text do not feature in online glossaries of places in Hardy’s Wessex with their real world equivalents. Its significance is that it supposedly builds on themes and scenes in Hardy’s unpublished and lost first manuscript The Poor Man and the Lady.

I have now finished The Woodlanders and must say that things ran to a near standstill somewhere around the middle of the book. At times it felt twice as long as it is. I think the moral dilemma of our heroine is difficult to relate to from our perspective.
I did enjoy his descriptions of nature, especially of the woods. And of course it was fascinationg to learn about a trade that must have been dying out even as he wrote about it, the copsework.
My copy has a map of Southern England with an overlay of Hardy’s fictitious Wessex which would probably most use to people who know the region.

>6 john257hopper: This is interesting, thank you!

I finished The Return of the Native (1878), which is a love "square" (maybe even a pentagon) in which two newcomers and three natives of Egdon Heath are entangled. The heath itself is a major character in this story, if you will, as it is key to several plot points. Two marriages occur between the wrong people and various misunderstandings drive the plot of the story toward the eventual outcome.

The novel was slow at first. The writing is very dense, filled with descriptions of the heath: in heat, in rain, in snow, in wind; with animals, snakes, birds and many insects (especially moths), which I enjoyed, but could only manage about 30 pages at a sitting. About the halfway point, however, when the two marriages show signs of trouble, I became engrossed in the story and read the second half almost without stopping. I can't say I loved any of the characters, but Hardy gave me enough empathy for most of them to keep me reading.

>8 kac522: I have vague memories of that, if it’s the one with the reddle man? Who provides red paint for marking sheep to the farmers? I’m afraid that’s all I remember about it. The most memorable thing about Hardy’s books seem to be what he tells us about rural life and rural occupations that have vanished.

>9 MissWatson: Yes, that's the one. The main characters are Eustacia Vye (an outsider recently moved to the heath) and Clym Yeobright (the native who returns to the heath). Eustacia longs for a more exciting life, and is drawn to Clym because he's returned from Paris and she longs to be part of that life. Clym, on the other hand, has returned to the heath because he is drawn back to the life of the heath and has rejected the values the city represents. The reddleman (Diggory Venn) is the least complicated of the characters and seems to be around when people need rescuing.

This one has lots of rural life. I've been reading his novels in order and the one I read last month, The Hand of Ethelberta, is an exception--not much rural life and partially set in London. Next month is The Trumpet-Major which is set during the Napoleonic wars and is his only truly "historical" novel.

Most of the novels seem to be looking back at a way of life that is vanishing, although not technically historical fiction. It's that clash of the old vs. what's coming ahead that often drives things.

>10 kac522: Ah yes, thanks for the summary. Maybe I’ll take the easy way out and rewatch the TV movie made from this...which I bought because Steven Mackintosh was in it. He played the reddleman, as I recall.

Yesterday I started The Well Beloved. It was written between Tess of the d'Urbervilles and Jude the Obscure, but was the last one to be published. I'm now half way through and really enjoying it, although it doesn't have the misery (as yet) usually associated with Hardy.

>4 kac522: That sounds like a really interesting project. I often think that's the best way to read an author. I did that with Zola's Rougon- Maquart cycle.

>12 SassyLassy: I tried to do it by myself, but only read the first few and got distracted. This time I'm following along with a booktuber, Jen the Librarian, and her intros & wrap-ups have helped me stay on track:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FVRuE8hjBFI

>12 SassyLassy: "it doesn't have the misery (as yet) usually associated with Hardy." 😉

In her intros, Jen gives each novel a rating on the "misery" scale! We haven't gotten to The Well-Beloved, but you can check out her "misery" rating for the first 6 novels.

Voting for Jan-Mar 2026 is open:

https://www.librarything.com/topic/375332#

I haven't quite finished Wessex Takes, but will start December's book as soon as I can.

I finished another Hardy novel: The Trumpet-Major (1880). Set in a small seaside town near Weymouth during the Napoleonic Wars, the novel tells the story of a local young woman with 3 suitors: two brothers (one a soldier and the other a sailor) and a local rogue. Their town is on watch for a possible invasion of Napoleon and his men on the town's shores.

The romance plot is rather lame, particularly because the heroine, otherwise intelligent and practical, is frustratingly blind to recognize the man who truly loves her. On the other hand, the historical context and details were well done and Hardy shows some rare bits of humor while still portraying the very real feelings of fear of invasion by the locals. Hardy apparently did extensive research to get the details of the era and events correct, including interviews with elderly veteran sailors and soldiers who had witnessed the events. There's even a very short scene where King George III visits the town and chats with locals, which apparently was something the king was known to have done on occasion.

I am nearly finished Wessex Tales but I am enjoying it, despite the difference in the style of writing and its age. Its good though because I have never read Thomas Hardy before.