In 1895, at the age of 55, Thomas Hardy give up novels for poetry (which occupied him steadily for the remaining 33 years of his life). Rarely has a writer ended a career, or a phase of it, more triumphantly. In his last ten years as a novelist Hardy published three great works of tragic hue: The Mayor of Casterbridge, 1886; Tess of the d'Urbervilles, 1891; Jude the Obscure, 1895. The artistic achievement of these works was not immediately matched by the admiration of the world, for Tess and Jude offended many readers by the of disaster dominating them and by their treatment of sex; but the novels gradually won popular as well as critical esteem, and they are now genery ranked among the major works of nineteenS-century fiction.……

Violated by one man, forsaken by another,Tess Durbeyfield is the magnificent and spirited heroine of Thomas Hardy"s immortal work. Of all the great English novelists, no one writes more eloquently of tragic destiny than Hardy. With the innocent and powerless victim, Tess, he creates profound sympathy for human frailty, while passionately indicting the injustices of Victorian society. Scorned upon its publication in 1891 by outraged readers, Tess of the d"Urbervilles is today one of the enduring classics of nineteenth-century literature.

Introduction by Robert B. Heilman

EXPLANATORY NOTS TO THE FIRST

EDITION

PREFACE TO THE FIFTH AND LATER

EDITIONS

TESS OF THE D"URBERVILLES

BIOGRAPHICAL NOTE

NOTES ON THE TEXT

BIBLIOGRAPHY