Ergebnis von "Thomas Hardy" in Alle Kategorien

How To Own a Human is a selection of writings about cats and for cats. As well as stories and poems, it also includes rhymes, proverbs, fables and quotations, plus instructions for cats on how to train their humans - a sort of "Open Mew-niversity" course for felines. READERS: Ellen Dryden is an actor, writer and director working mainly for the stage and radio. She read English at Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford and after graduating she won a scholarship to the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art.

Subtitled 'A Story of To-day', A Laodicean occupies a unique place in the Thomas Hardy canon. Departing from pre-industrial Wessex, Hardy brings his themes of social constraint, fate, chance and miscommunication to the very modern world of the 1880s - complete with falsified telegraphs, fake photographs, and perilous train tracks. The story follows the life of Paula Power, heiress of her late father's railroad fortune and the new owner of the medieval Castle Stancy. With the castle in need of restoration, Paula employs architect George Somerset, who soon falls in love with her.

Jocelyn Pierston, a successful sculptor, is helpless in the face of "the well-beloved": the manifestation of perfect womanhood that seems to move like a will-o'-the-wisp from one acquaintance to the next. It shapes his whole life. Where his artistry involves permanence - cold stone objects - his heart is caught by ephemeral beauty. After years spent in London, a return to his rocky birthplace, the Isle of Slingers, sparks Pierston's extraordinary involvement with three generations of the Caro family.

This diverse, wide-ranging anthology features readings of 10 of the greatest books in the English language, taken from the BBC's Book at Bedtime and performed by a stellar cast of narrators. Here are nearly 27 hours of sensational stories, from iconic romances and humorous travelogues to pioneering Modernist masterpieces and compelling explorations of the human heart. Comprising much-loved favourites as well as neglected classics, this genre-spanning selection has something for everyone.

Life has the capacity of great moments and attainment, of lives well lived, fulfilling for ourselves and for those we touch. But for others life is arduous. There is no spark to ignite the curiosity, to explore and achieve a stability and a growth to their lives. Indeed their lives, in their own eyes, become almost meaningless, their sense of themselves subsumed under a myriad of problems, whether real or imagined. Seismic events in a life might crush them; the loss of a loved one for instance. Coping is difficult, support hard to find and isolation abounds.

Eustacia Vye's great desire in life was to be loved to madness, and in this, one of Thomas Hardy's best-loved novels, one of his most superb female characters conducts her wild and lethal campaign against her rival - the innocent, rather conventional Thomas - against the backdrop of Egdon Heath, the equally wild and lethal Dorset moorland on which Hardy grew up.

When Tess Durbeyfield is driven by family poverty to claim kinship with the wealthy D'Urbervilles and to seek a portion of their family fortune, meeting her cousin Alec proves to be her downfall. A very different man, Angel Clare, seems to offer her love and salvation, but Tess must choose whether to reveal her past or remain silent in the hope of a peaceful future. Thomas Hardy’s timeless masterpiece is brought to life in this new recording by Anne-Marie Duff (Shameless, His Dark Materials).

Written in 1873 it was autobiographical and the heroine Elfride Swancourt is based on Hardy's first wife Emma Gifford. The novel tells the tail of a the love triangle between a young woman, Elfride Swancourt, and her two suitors from very different backgrounds.

A glittering collection of some of the world's finest short stories.

This collection includes two of the most notable titles from author Thomas Hardy, Tess of the d'Urbervilles and Far from the Madding Crowd.

Thomas Hardy's powerful novel of swift sexual passion and slow-burning loyalty centres on Bathsheba Everdene, a proud working woman whose life is complicated by three different men - respectable farmer Boldwood, seductive Sergeant Troy, and devoted Gabriel - making her the object of scandal and betrayal. Vividly portraying the superstitions and traditions of a small rural community, Far from the Madding Crowd shows the precarious position of a woman in a man's world.

The story delicately balances the concerns of the Mellstock parish choir with a romance between Dick Dewy, a member of the choir, and Fancy Day, the village schoolmistress. While the choir battles for its survival against the new vicar's mechanical church organ, personal conflicts arise over the anachronistic customs of tradition.

Two on a Tower is Hardy's ninth novel and contains perhaps his most complete use of the theme of love across the class and age divide, to beautifully depict Hardy's reverence for science and astronomy. The unhappily married Lady Constantine breaks all the rules of social etiquette when she falls in love with young Swithin St. Cleeve, an astronomer and her social inferior. Despite their differences that society deems unacceptable, together, from an astronomical observatory, the lovers 'sweep the heavens'.

A 19th century novel that defied the repressive moral conventions of Victorian England. Young Tess Durbeyfield comes from an impoverished home. Her father, desperate to alleviate the family's financial plight, presses his daughter into work for the wealthy D'Urbervilles. But in doing so, Tess meets the manipulative Alec, who forces himself upon her. And though Tess later meets a kinder man who proposes marriage, her salvation is jeopardized when she reveals to him her troubled past.

When peddler John Durbeyfield learns that he may be a descendant of a noble family, he sends his oldest child, Tess, to “claim kin.” Blindly ushered into harm’s way, the strong-willed yet untinctured peasant girl is not prepared for the blighted course her life will take. Nor for those whose destructive desires will determine her fate, and force Tess to make only the most desperate of choices. From her tragic loss of innocence through betrayal and revenge, Tess’s struggle for survival challenged the era’s mores and the cruel indifference shown women in Victorian society.

A bold new dramatisation of Thomas Hardy’s classic, giving his story a 21st-century resonance. Tess Durbeyfield is driven by poverty to claim kinship with the wealthy D'Urberville family. But meeting her cousin Alec proves to be her downfall. This classic criticism of social convention is given a new treatment in this full-cast adaptation which blows away the shepherd's pipe and heritage stereotype, foregrounding Hardy's social and sexual radicalism.

Far from the Madding Crowd is Thomas Hardy's fourth novel. It centers on the lives of five characters: Gabriel Oak, Bathsheba Everdene, Mr Boldwood, Sgt. Troy, and Fanny Robin. The plot involves love, loyalty, death, and betrayal, and all this is delivered to us in Hardy's most eloquent prose. The images of character and nature are painted for our mind's eye with sublime style.

A gripping collection of weird and fantastical stories of supernatural and unbelievable happenings. "Pomegranate Seed" by Edith Wharton; "The Tiger" by Hugh Walpole; "When I Was Dead" by Vincent O'Sullivan; "The Fire" by Charles John Cutcliffe Hyne; "Satan's Circus" by Eleanor Smith; "The Coffin Merchant" by Richard Middleton; and more tall stories....

In the remote wildness of Egdon Heath, the crossed love affairs and marriages of a small group of people are played out against the background of nature’s beauty and indifference to mankind. Through a series of vivid incidents and encounters, The Return of the Native moves in a relentless drive towards tragedy, as the plans and dreams of the lovers miscarry, defeated by chance, or destiny or self-deception. In their unhappy stories, Hardy gives us a powerful dramatization of his bleak philosophy, his belief in man’s helplessness before the malevolence of the universe.

Wessex Tales, a collection of short stories including "The Three Strangers", "The Withered Arm", and "The Distracted Preacher", deals with a number of timeless themes seen so often in Hardy’s work: marriage, class, revenge, and disappointed love. Many of the tales have a supernatural tinge, and all are set around Hardy’s much loved homeland.