Jude the Obscure (Norton Critical Editions) - Softcover

Hardy, Thomas

Softcover

ISBN 10: 039397278X ISBN 13: 9780393972788

Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company, 1999

Synopsis

The text reprinted in this volume is based on Hardy’s final revision for the 1912 Wessex Edition and includes his Preface and Postscript.

The novel is fully annotated and is accompanied by Hardy’s map of Wessex and a plan of late Victorian Oxford (the Christminster of the novel).

The textual history of Jude the Obscure―including an account of the surviving manuscript showing Hardy’s major change of intention during its composition, of the pressure to bowdlerize the novel, and of the subsequent restoration and revisions―is traced in a series of extracts from Hardy’s writings as well as from those of his contemporaries and of modern scholars Richard Little Purdy, John Paterson, and Robert C. Slack.

Selections from Hardy’s poems, autobiography, letters, and journalistic writings provide a background to the novel.  Autobiographical elements and the social climate of the period in which Hardy lived and wrote are discussed by C. J. Weber and W. R. Rutland, and Hardy’s use of locale is explored in a section prepared specially for this edition.

"Contemporary Reception" provides a selection of reviews.  "Modern Criticism" is provided by Irving Howe, Arthur Mizener, A. Alvarez, J. I. M. Stewart, Harvey Curtis Webster, D. H. Lawrence, Albert J. Guerard, Robert Gittings, Frederick P. W. McDowell, and Emma Clifford.

A Selected Bibliography is included.

About this title

Book Description:

Thomas Hardy's last novel charts the life of Jude Fawley from his parochial childhood to his death in the collegiate city of Christminster, the centre of his intellectual dreams and their failure. Initially published as a much-abridged serial, the text first appeared in its full and present form in 1895.

From the Publisher:

In 1895 Hardy's final novel, the great tale of Jude The Obscure, sent shockwaves of indignation rolling across Victorian England. Hardy had dared to write frankly about sexuality and to indict the institutions of marriage, education, and religion. But he had, in fact, created a deeply moral work. The stonemason Jude Fawley is a dreamer; his is a tragedy of unfulfilled aims. With his tantalizing cousin Sue Bridehead, the last and most extraordinary of Hardy's heroines, Jude takes on the world--and discovers, tragically, its brutal indifference. The most powerful expression of Hardy's philosophy, and a profound exploration of man's essential loneliness, Jude The Obscure is a great and beautiful book. "His style touches sublimity."--T.S. Eliot

About this edition

• Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
• Publication date: 1999
• ISBN 10: 039397278X
• ISBN 13: 9780393972788
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 2
• Number of pages: 480
• Editor: Page Norman