Wessex Novels

This set collects Thomas Hardy's principal novels of rural southwest England, the imagined county he called Wessex. Farmers, dairy workers, stonemasons, soldiers, and small-town traders move through heath, valley, and market town, colliding with marriage law, class, and public shame. Recurring situations include a hasty early bond, a lover's return, a secret that becomes spectacle, and the pressure of new money on older custom. Each novel stands alone, though places and social types overlap from volume to volume. The books are realist fictions of provincial life, not a regional gazetteer and not one continuous saga.

A collection of reprints in a dark green six-volume slipcase.