Other editions of book WESSEX TALES

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Wessex Tales is an 1888 collection of tales written by Thomas Hardy, many of which are set before Hardy's birth in 1840. Through them, Thomas Hardy talks about nineteenth century marriage, grammar, class status, how men and women were viewed, medical diseases and more. In 1888, Wessex Tales contained only five stories ('The Three Strangers', 'The Withered Arm', 'Fellow-Townsmen', 'Interlopers at the Knap', and 'The Distracted Preacher') all published first in periodicals. For the 1896 reprinting, Hardy added "An Imaginative Woman," but in 1912 moved this to another collection, Life's Little Ironies, while at the same time transferring two stories – "A Tradition of Eighteen Hundred and Four" and "The Melancholy Hussar of the German Legion" – from Life's Little Ironies to Wessex Tales.

First appearing in 1888, Wessex Tales is a collection of short stories by the supremely gifted Thomas Hardy. The perfect way to get acquainted with Hardy's world. Several of the tales were adapted for television in a 1973 BBC mini series starring, among others, John Hurt, Billie Whitlelaw, and Ben Kingsley.Sayre Street Books offers the world's greatest literature in easy to navigate, beautifully designed digital editions.

Wessex Tales is a collection of tales written by English novelist and poet Thomas Hardy, many of which are set before Hardy’s birth in 1840. Through them, Thomas Hardy talks about nineteenth century marriage, grammar, class status, how men and women were viewed, medical diseases and more.In 1888, Wessex Tales contained only five stories (‘The Three Strangers’, ‘The Withered Arm’, ‘Fellow-Townsmen’, ‘Interlopers at the Knap’, and ‘The Distracted Preacher’) all published first in periodicals. For the 1896 reprinting, Hardy added ”An Imaginative Woman,” but in 1912 moved this to another collection, Life’s Little Ironies, while at the same time transferring two stories – ”A Tradition of Eighteen Hundred and Four” and ”The Melancholy Hussar of the German Legion” – from Life’s Little Ironies to Wessex Tales.

"Wessex Tales" (1888) by Thomas Hardy is a collection of short stories. Hardy writes of the true nature of nineteenth century marriage and its inherent restrictions, the use of grammar as a diluted form of thought, the disparities created by the role of class status in determining societal rank, the stance of women in society and the severity of even minor diseases causing the rapid onset of fatal symptoms prior to the introduction of sufficient medicinal practices. A focal point of all the short stories is that of social constraints acting to diminish one’s contentment in life, necessitating unwanted marriages, repression of true emotion and succumbing to melancholia due to constriction within the confines of 19th century perceived normality.

In Wessex Tales, his first collection of short stories, Hardy recorded the legends, superstitions, local customs, and lore of a Wessex that was rapidly passing out of memory. But these well-loved Tales also portray the social and economic stresses of Dorset in the 1880s, and reveal Hardy's growing scepticism about the possibility of achieving personal and sexual satisfaction in the modern world. By turns humorous, ironic, macabre, and elegiac, these seven stories show the full range of Hardy's story-telling genius.

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