Books with title The Toy Trumpet

* Beautifully illustrated with atmospheric paintings by renowned artists, The Trumpet-Major is a fascinating historical novel that tells the absorbing story of a young woman being pursued by three ardent suitors during the era of the Napoleonic Wars.* Just as accessible and enjoyable for today's readers as it would have been when first published over a century ago, the novel is one of the great works of English literature and continues to be widely read throughout the world.* This meticulous edition from Heritage Illustrated Publishing is a faithful reproduction of the original text and is enhanced with images of classic works of art carefully selected by our team of professional editors.

Hardy distrusted the application of nineteenth-century empiricism to history because he felt it marginalized important human elements. In The Trumpet Major, the tale of a woman courted by three competing suitors during the Napoleonic wars, he explores the subversive effects of ordinary human desire and conflicting loyalties on systematized versions of history.

The present tale is founded more largely on testimony—oral and written—than any other in this series. The external incidents which direct its course are mostly an unexaggerated reproduction of the recollections of old persons well known to the author in childhood, but now long dead, who were eye-witnesses of those scenes. If wholly transcribed their recollections would have filled a volume thrice the length of ‘The Trumpet-Major.’ Down to the middle of this century, and later, there were not wanting, in the neighbourhood of the places more or less clearly indicated herein, casual relics of the circumstances amid which the action moves—our preparations for defence against the threatened invasion of England by Buonaparte. An outhouse door riddled with bullet-holes, which had been extemporized by a solitary man as a target for firelock practice when the landing was hourly expected, a heap of bricks and clods on a beacon-hill, which had formed the chimney and walls of the hut occupied by the beacon-keeper, worm-eaten shafts and iron heads of pikes for the use of those who had no better weapons, ridges on the down thrown up during the encampment, fragments of volunteer uniform, and other such lingering remains, brought to my imagination in early childhood the state of affairs at the date of the war more vividly than volumes of history could have done.

War threatens the rich, green fields of Wessex in Hardy's historical novel, The Trumpet-Major. The Napoleonic Wars are at their height, and upheaval and uncertainty plague British soil. In the midst of it all the impoverished beauty Anne Garland finds herself at the centre of a love quadrangle. She is torn between the persistent and annoying Festus Derryman, her womanising childhood sweetheart Bob Loveday, and the reliable and thoughtful John Loveday, the eponymous Trumpet-Major. Who will she choose? Hardy's eighth published novel is a gentle and humorous tale about the confusion and conflict of life.

This scarce antiquarian book is a facsimile reprint of the original. Due to its age, it may contain imperfections such as marks, notations, marginalia and flawed pages. Because we believe this work is culturally important, we have made it available as part of our commitment for protecting, preserving, and promoting the world's literature in affordable, high quality, modern editions that are true to the original work.

Thomas Hardy’s novel, The Trumpet-Major, published in 1880, is a great favourite. It’s certainly not one of his masterpiece tragedies (Tess of the D’Urbervilles, Jude the Obscure), but neither is the book as light as his rural humorous romance Under The Greenwood Tree. The Trumpet-Major is a curious novel for the manner in which Hardy slips the lives of his characters into historic events–he includes the Battle of Trafalgar, Nelson, and the ship the Victory in this story. This puts a date on the action, but for the rest of the novel, we are on fairly familiar ground as Hardy explores that ever fertile yet oddly complicated territory surrounding the choices and motivations of women. Hardy sets the romance and courtship of a young Wessex woman against the upheaval and uncertainty of impending war.

Thomas Hardy was one of the greatest writers and poets of the Victorian era. Hardy was also an esteemed poet but it was his classic novels that earned him lasting fame. Hardy's books are distinguished for their tragic characters and their inner struggles between their desires and social circumstances. The Trumpet-Major, published in 1880, is a historical novel set during the Napoleonic wars that centers around Anne Garland, a young woman who is being courted by three suitors.

The Trumpet-Major is a novel by Thomas Hardy published in 1880, and his only historical novel. It concerns the heroine, Anne Garland, being pursued by three suitors: John Loveday, the eponymous trumpet major in a British regiment, honest and loyal; his brother Bob, a flighty sailor; and Festus Derriman, the cowardly nephew of the local squire. Unusually for a Hardy novel, the ending is not entirely tragic; however, there remains an ominous element in the probable fate of one of the main characters. The novel is set in Weymouth during the Napoleonic wars; the town was then anxious about the possibility of invasion by Napoleon. Of the two brothers, John fights with Wellington in the Peninsular War, and Bob serves with Nelson at Trafalgar. The Napoleonic Wars was a setting that Hardy would use again in his play, The Dynasts, and it borrows from the same source material.

Tod is a shy tortoise who hides away, especially when it’s time to tidy up! But what will happen when Tod is forced out of the comfort of his own shell? This sweet story is written and illustrated by acclaimed author Charlotte Middleton.• Blue/Band 4 books offer longer, repeated patterns with sequential events and integrated literary and natural language.• Children can follow the important stages of the story in the flow chart on pages 14–15.• Text type: A story with a familiar setting• Curriculum links: Citizenship: Animals and us