The Distracted Preacher and Other Tales

by Hardy, Thomas; Hill, Susan

• ISBN13: 9780140431247
• ISBN10: 0140431241
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 1980-05-29
• Publisher: Penguin Classics

Summary

The darkly passionate short stories of Thomas Hardy are compelling explorations of love, social class, superstition and legend. This collection contains many of his finest and most representative, and includes 'The Withered Arm', an eerie depiction of arcane witchcraft in nineteenth-century England; 'Barbara of the House of Grebe', in which a beautiful man's tragic disfigurement by fire is savagely exploited by his rival; 'The Son's Veto', showing the cruelty of an educated youth towards his ignorant but tender mother; and 'The Distracted Preacher', the story of one man's conflict between heartfelt love and his own sense of moral and civic duty. By turns moving and poetic, and surprisingly modern and brutally macabre, these eloquent tales may be numbered among the greatest creations of Hardy's genius.

Author Biography

Thomas Hardy was born on June 2, 1840. In his writing, he immortalized the site of his birth—Egdon Heath, in Dorset, near Dorchester. Delicate as a child, he was taught at home by his mother before he attended grammar school. At sixteen, Hardy was apprenticed to an architect, and for many years, architecture was his profession; in his spare time, he pursued his first and last literary love, poetry. Finally convinced that he could earn his living as an author, he retired from architecture, married, and devoted himself to writing. An extremely productive novelist, Hardy published an important book every year or two. In 1896, disturbed by the public outcry over the unconventional subjects of his two greatest novels—Tess of the D’Urbervilles and Jude the Obscure—he announced that he was giving up fiction and afterward produced only poetry. In later years, he received many honors. He died on January 11, 1928, and was buried in Poet’s Corner, in Westminster Abbey. It was as a poet that he wished to be remembered, but today critics regard his novels as his most memorable contribution to English literature for their psychological insight, decisive delineation of character, and profound presentation of tragedy.

Table of Contents

Hardy's Life and Works: A Chronology	7	(28)
Introduction
Thomas Hardy as a Short Story Writer	11	(12)
The Selected Stories	23	(12)
Hardy's Wessex	35	(5)
Map	36	(2)
Key to Place-Names	38	(2)
The Distracted Preacher	40	(59)
A Mere Interlude	99	(35)
The Withered Arm	134	(31)
A Tragedy of Two Ambitions	165	(27)
The Melancholy Hussar of the German Legion	192	(19)
Barbara of the House of Grebe	211	(33)
On the Western Circuit	244	(26)
The Son's Veto	270	(16)
The Fiddler of the Reels	286	(19)
An Imaginative Woman	305	(26)
The Grave by the Handpost	331	(12)
Hardy's General Preface to the Wessex Edition of 1912	343	(6)
Bibliographical Note	349	(1)
Note on the Text	350	(1)
Explanatory Notes	351