The Woodlanders

Thomas Hardy said of The Woodlanders that he liked it 'as a story' the best of all his novels. The story itself is classically simple. The disastrous impact of outside life on a secluded community in Dorset is captured in the account of two rivals for the hand of Grace Melbury: Giles Winterborne, a simple and loyal woodlander, and an exotic and sophisticated outsider, Dr Edred Fitzpiers. Betrayal, adultery, disillusion and moral compromise are all worked out in a setting evoked as both beautiful and treacherous.

In her Introduction to this new Penguin Classics edition, Patricia Ingham discusses Hardy's preoccupation with the capacities and limitations of the language which he used to explore the issues that preoccupied him as a novelist. These were the implications of evolution, the role of social class, and the nature of women.