Jude the Obscure

Upon its first appearance in 1895, Thomas Hardy' s Jude the Obscure shocked Victorian critics and readers with a frank depiction of sexuality and an unbridled indictment of the institutions of marriage, education, and religion, reportedly causing one Angli-can bishop to order the book publicly burned. The experience so exhausted Hardy that he never wrote a work of fiction again. Rich in symbolism, Jude the Obscure is the story of Jude Fawley and his struggle to rise from his station as a poor Wessex stonemason to that of a scholar at Christminster. It is also the story of Jude' s ill-fated relationship with his cousin Sue Bridehead, and the ultimate tragedy that causes Jude' s undoing and Sue' s transformation. Jude the Obscure explores man' s essential loneliness and remains one of Hardy' s most widely read novels.

Rosellen Brown is the author of <b>Half a Heart, The Autobiography of My Mother, Tender Mercies</b> and <b>Before and After</b>. She lives in Chicago.<br><br><br><i>From the Trade Paperback edition.</i>