RETURN OF THE NATIVE, THE（ISBN=9780679417309）

　　From AudioFile
　　Clym Yeobright, native of Egdon Heath, returns from the bright society of Paris and, as any reader of Hardy knows, all is not smooth. He is quickly taken by and marries the one woman he should not--Eustacia Vye. The suffering that follows is mitigated somewhat by the ending, but more by the mastery of Alan Rickman's reading. At the start, Rickman senses the voice for each character in Hardy's fictional world, and he maintains each character's personality throughout. He even manages to project Hardy's subtle shadings of tone with the rhythm and tempo of his narration, throwing in a song here and there because, in spite of his gloom, there is a festive strain to Hardy, as well. If you have a hard time reading this classic English writer, this is how to do it. P.E.F. (c) AudioFile, Portland, Maine --This text refers to the Audio Cassette edition.

　　THOMAS HARDY, whose writings immortalized the Wessex countryside and dramatized his sense of the inevitable tragedy of life, was born near Egdon Heath in Dorset in 1840, the eldest child of a prosperous stonemason. As a youth he trained as an architect and in 1862 obtained a post in London. During this time he began seriously to write poetry, which remained his first literary love and his last. In 1867-68, his first novel was refused publication, but Under the Greenwood Tree (1872), his first Wessex novel, did well enough to convince him to continue writing. In 1874, Far from the Madding Crowd, published serially and anonymously in the Cornhill Magazine, became a great success. Hardy married Emma Gifford in 1874, and in 1875 they settled at Max Gate in Dorchester, where he lived the rest of his life. There he wrote The Return of the Native (1878), The Mayor of Casterbridge (1886), Tess of the d’Urbervilles (1891), and Jude the Obscure (1895). With Tess, Hardy clashed with the expectations of his audience; a storm of abuse broke over the “infidelity” and “obscenity” of this great novel he had subtitled “A Pure Woman Faithfully Presented.” Jude the Obscure aroused even greater indignation and was denounced as pornography. Hardy’s disgust at the reaction to Jude led him to announce in 1896 that he would never write fiction again. He published Wessex Poems in 1898, Poems of the Past and Present in 1901, and from 1903 to 1908, The Dynasts, a huge drama in which Hardy’s conception of the Immanent Will, implicit in the tragic novels, is most clearly stated. In 1912, Hardy’s wife, Emma, died. The marriage was childless and had long been a troubled one, but in the years after her death, Hardy memorialized her in several poems. At seventy-four, he married his longtime secretary, Florence Dugdale, herself a writer of children’s books and articles, with whom he lived happily until his death in 1928. His heart was buried in the Wessex countryside; his ashes were placed next to Charles Dickens’s in the Poet’s Corner of Westminster Abbey.

Introduction
                                                                                                   ,
Select Bibliography
Chronology
Hardy's Preface to 'The Return of the Native
Postscript
                Book First: The Three Women
1. A Face on which Time makes but Little
   Impression
2. Humanity appears upon the Scene, Hand in
   Hand with Trouble
3. The Custom of the Country      
4. The Halt on the Turnpike Road
5. Perplexity among Honest People   
6. The Figure against the Sky           
7. Queen of Night
8. Those who are Found where there is said to be
   Nobody
9. Love leads a Shrewd Man into Strategy
10. A Desperate Attempt at Persuasion    
11. The Dishonesty of an Honest Woman  
                   Book Second: The Arrival
1. Tidings of the Comer
2. The People at Blooms-End make ready .
3. How a Little Sound produced a Great Dream
4. Eustacia is led on to an Adventure   
5. Through the Moonlight
6. The Two stand Face to Face
……