Books with title Woodland Wonders

The Woodlanders is a novel by Thomas Hardy. It was serialised from May 1886 to April 1887 in Macmillan's Magazine and published in three volumes in 1887. It is one of his series of Wessex novels. Thomas Hardy OM was an English novelist and poet. A Victorian realist in the tradition of George Eliot, he was influenced both in his novels and in his poetry by Romanticism, especially William Wordsworth.

Before Grace Melbury went away to school, she was in love with Giles Winterborne, a simple woodsman in the forests of Blackmoore Vale. But Grace's schooling has given her a taste for refinement, and upon her return she finds herself drawn to a dashing newcomer, Dr. Edred Fitzpiers. This romantic triangle is the focus of Thomas Hardy's novel of betrayal, disillusionment, and moral compromise. The story unfolds in a lavishly evoked landscape that becomes as central to the plot as any of the characters. In this tale, which Hardy regarded as his best story, the great Victorian novelist returns to his fictional setting of Wessex to explore a characteristic subject: sexual relationships in an unsophisticated society. He also addresses issues directly affecting rural England during the early nineteenth century, when traditional societies underwent pressure from a changing world. A splendid introduction to the physical and psychological world of Wessex, The Woodlanders is also an intriguing forerunner of Hardy's later masterpieces.

Thomas Hardy's 1887 novel "The Woodlanders" takes place in the woodland village of Little Hintock and concerns the story of Giles Winterborne, an honest woodsman who wishes to marry his childhood sweetheart, Grace Melbury. While the two are informally betrothed to each other, when Grace gains an education through her father's persistent financial sacrifices he feels that his daughter is too good for a simple woodsman and pushes her into the direction of another suitor. Set in a rustic, evocative setting, "The Woodlanders" is rich with such Hardyan themes as unrequited love and social class mobility. A classic novel, "The Woodlanders" is a worthy addition to the works of Thomas Hardy and fans of the author will enjoy this somber and tragic tale.

Educated beyond her station, Grace Melbury returns to the woodland village of little Hintock and cannot marry her intended, Giles Winterborne. Her alternative choice proves disastrous, and in a moving tale that has vibrant characters, many humorous moments and genuine pathos coupled with tragic irony, Hardy eschews a happy ending. With characteristic derision, he exposes the cruel indifference of the archaic legal system off his day, and shows the tragic consequences of untimely adherence to futile social and religious proprieties

Thomas Hardy's 1887 novel "The Woodlanders" takes place in the woodland village of Little Hintock and concerns the story of Giles Winterborne, an honest woodsman who wishes to marry his childhood sweetheart, Grace Melbury. While the two are informally betrothed to each other, when Grace gains an education through her father's persistent financial sacrifices he feels that his daughter is too good for a simple woodsman and pushes her into the direction of another suitor. Set in a rustic, evocative setting, "The Woodlanders" is rich with such Hardyan themes as unrequited love and social class mobility. A classic novel, "The Woodlanders" is a worthy addition to the works of Thomas Hardy and fans of the author will enjoy this somber and tragic tale.

Thomas Hardy OM (2 June 1840 – 11 January 1928) was an English novelist and poet. A Victorian realist in the tradition of George Eliot, he was influenced both in his novels and in his poetry by Romanticism, especially William Wordsworth. He was highly critical of much in Victorian society, especially on the declining status of rural people in Britain, such as those from his native South West England.While Hardy wrote poetry throughout his life and regarded himself primarily as a poet, his first collection was not published until 1898. Initially, therefore, he gained fame as the author of such novels as Far from the Madding Crowd (1874), The Mayor of Casterbridge (1886), Tess of the d'Urbervilles (1891), and Jude the Obscure (1895). During his lifetime, Hardy's poetry was acclaimed by younger poets (particularly the Georgians) who viewed him as a mentor. After his death his poems were lauded by Ezra Pound, W. H. Auden and Philip Larkin.Many of his novels concern tragic characters struggling against their passions and social circumstances, and they are often set in the semi-fictional region of Wessex; initially based on the medieval Anglo-Saxon kingdom, Hardy's Wessex eventually came to include the counties of Dorset, Wiltshire, Somerset, Devon, Hampshire and much of Berkshire, in southwest and south central England. Two of his novels, Tess of the d'Urbervilles and Far from the Madding Crowd, were listed in the top 50 on the BBC's survey The Big Read. (wikipedia.org)

From the author of The Mayor of Casterbridge, this novel follows a woman torn between a wealthy, unfaithful husband and the humble woodsman she truly loves.As a young woman in a small village, Grace Melbury expects to one day marry her sweetheart, Giles. But her ambitious father has decided that her upbringing would be wasted on such a man, and pressures her to wed the doctor Fitzpiers instead. It soon becomes clear that Fitzpiers has little more to offer Grace than social status. His dalliances with other women lead to the couple’s gradual estrangement, and even Grace’s father recognizes him as a scoundrel. But Grace’s dream of reuniting with her childhood beau may be doomed to failure in this heartrending story of true love denied.

The Woodlanders (1887) was Thomas Hardy's own favorite among his stories, and no other book of his more fully represents the many sides of his genius. This portrait of five people in an English village who are tangled in a drama of passion, betrayal, poverty, and pride of place richly demonstrates all of Hardy's distinguishing qualities—his intimacy with rural England, his feeling for nature, his frankness about physical desire, and his gift for rendering, in the most specific way, the mystery at the heart of things.This Everyman's Library edition is set from the text of the 1912 Wessex edition and includes Hardy’s map of fictional Wessex.(Book Jacket Status: Not Jacketed)

In this classically simple tale of the disastrous impact of outside life on a secluded community in Dorset, now in a new edition, Hardy narrates the rivalry for the hand of Grace Melbury between a simple and loyal woodlander and an exotic and sophisticated outsider. Betrayal, adultery, disillusion, and moral compromise are all worked out in a setting evoked as both beautiful and treacherous. The Woodlanders, with its thematic portrayal of the role of social class, gender, and evolutionary survival, as well as its insights into the capacities and limitations of language, exhibits Hardy's acute awareness of his era's most troubling dilemmas.

This edition incorporates an original introduction from Moorside Press, including a biography, a critical discussion of Hardy's place in the history of British Literature and a short contextual discussion of the book.Published in 1887 but first appearing in serial form through the Macmillan Magazine a year before, The Woodlanders was Hardy eleventh novel. The plot is constructed as a tragedy around the luckless Giles Winterborne who seeks to marry his childhood sweetheart Grace Melbury. Unfortunately, her father does not approve of the match and pushes her instead towards Edred Fitzpiers, a young doctor who meets his approval. Through mischance, wrongful impressions and good deeds gone bad, what resolves is not the romantic finale that might be expected.Following on from The Mayor of Casterbridge, in which the lead character was the centre-piece, The Woodlanders presents another example of Hardy writing against type, rejecting what had worked for him previously, choosing instead the untried and the unexpected. Once again, this is Shakespearian tragedy applied to the contemporary and in the process showing up the hypocrisies of the social system. And yet is not the down at heel who wins out – here, Gabriel Oak doesn't get to marry Bathsheba – and in presenting the reader with such an outcome, Hardy is also providing a preface to other characters for whom he displays little or no sympathy.

The Woodlanders is a novel by Thomas Hardy. It was serialised from May 1886 to April 1887 in Macmillan's Magazine and published in three volumes in 1887. It is one of his series of Wessex novels.Soon after the novel's publication, Hardy was approached by Jack Grein and Charles Jarvis for permission to adapt it for performance in 1889. But although various drafts were written, the project came to nothing. It was not until 1913 that A.H. Evans' play in 3 acts was produced by the Dorchester Debating and Dramatic Society; the performance was also taken to London that year and to Weymouth in 1914. In the following century, two dramatic adaptations of the novel went on tour in the West Country. In 2013 the New Hardy Players put on Emily Fearn's version, and in 2016 the Hammerpuzzle Theatre Company put on Tamsin Kennard's version.The BBC made the novel into a film in 1970, starring Felicity Kendal and Ralph Bates. This was followed by Phil Agland's The Woodlanders of 1997.The novel was adapted as an opera by Stephen Paulus and premiered by Opera Theatre of Saint Louis in 1985.