Jude the Obscure Format: Paperback

This Third Norton Critical Edition of Hardy’s final novel has been revised to reflect the breadth of responses it has received over the last fifteen years. The text of the novel is again based on Hardy’s final revision for the 1912 Wessex Edition.

The Norton Critical Edition also includes:
· Expanded footnotes by Ralph Pite, further drawing out Hardy’s web of allusions and comprehensively indicating the material culture in which he embeds this narrative.
· A selection of Hardy’s poems―four of them new to the Third Edition―that emphasizes the biographical contexts from which parts of Jude the Obscure arose.
· Eighteen critical responses, including eleven modern essays―eight of them new to the Third Edition. Simon Gatrell, Michael Hollington, Elaine Showalter, Victor Luftig, and Mary Jacobus are among the new voices.
· A Chronology and revised and expanded Selected Bibliography.

Thomas Hardy (1840–1928), enduring author of the twentieth century, wrote the classics Jude the Obscure, Tess of the d'Urbervilles, Far from the Madding Crowd, The Return of the Native, The Mayor of Casterbridge, and many other works.

Ralph Pite is the Director of the Institute of Advanced Studies and Professor of English at the University of Bristol, where he has taught since 2007. He is the author of Thomas Hardy: The Guarded Life, Hardy's Geography: Wessex and the Regional Novel, and The Circle of Our Vision: Dante's Presence in English Romantic Poetry. His edited or co-edited works include Romans and Romantics, W. S. Graham: Speaking Towards You, Lives of the Great Romantics: Coleridge, and The Divine Comedy: The Vision of Dante.