 First edition title page | |
| Author | Thomas Hardy |
|---|---|
| Language | English |
| Genre | Novel |
| Publisher | Macmillan and Co |
Publication date | 1887 |
| Text | The Woodlanders at Wikisource |
The Woodlanders is a novel by Thomas Hardy. The novel is set between 1856 and 1858. It was serialised from 15 May 1886 to 9 April 1887 in Macmillan's Magazine [1] and published in three volumes in 1887. [2] It is one of his series of Wessex novels.
The story takes place in a small woodland village called Little Hintock, and concerns the efforts of an honest woodsman, Giles Winterborne, to marry his childhood sweetheart, Grace Melbury. Although they have been informally betrothed for some time, her father has made financial sacrifices to give his adored only child a superior education and no longer considers Giles good enough for her. When the new doctor – a well-born and handsome young man named Edred Fitzpiers – takes an interest in Grace, her father does all he can to make Grace forget Giles, and to encourage what he sees as a brilliant match. Grace has misgivings prior to the marriage as she sees a village woman (Suke Damson) coming out of his cottage very early in the morning and suspects he has been sleeping with her. She tells her father that she does not want to go on with the marriage and he becomes very angry. Later Fitzpiers tells her Suke has been to visit him because she was in agony from toothache and he extracted a molar. Grace clutches at this explanation – in fact Fitzpiers has started an affair with Suke some weeks previously. After the honeymoon, the couple take up residence in an unused wing of Melbury's house. Soon, however, Fitzpiers begins an affair with a rich widow named Mrs. Charmond, which Grace and her father discover. Grace finds out by chance that Suke Damson has a full set of teeth and realises that Fitzpiers lied to her. The couple become progressively more estranged and Fitzpiers is assaulted by his father-in-law after he accidentally reveals his true character to him. Both Suke Damson and Mrs Charmond turn up at Grace's house demanding to know whether Fitzpiers is all right - Grace addresses them both sarcastically as "Wives -all". Fitzpiers later deserts Grace and goes to the Continent with Mrs Charmond. Grace realises that she has only ever really loved Giles but as there is no possibility of divorce feels that her love seems hopeless.
Melbury is told by a former legal clerk down on his luck that the law was changed in the previous year (making the setting of the action 1858) and divorce is now possible. He encourages Giles to resume his courtship of Grace. It later becomes apparent, however, that Fitzpiers' adultery is not sufficient for Grace to be entitled to a divorce. When Fitzpiers quarrels with Mrs. Charmond and returns to Little Hintock to try to reconcile with his wife, she flees the house and turns to Giles for help. He is still convalescing from a dangerous illness, but nobly allows her to sleep in his hut during stormy weather, whilst he insists on sleeping outside. As a result, he dies. Grace later allows herself to be won back to the (at least temporarily) repentant Fitzpiers, thus sealing her fate as the wife of an unworthy man. This is after Suke's husband Timothy Tangs has set a man trap to try to crush Fitzpiers' leg but it only tears Grace's skirt.
No one is left to mourn Giles except a courageous peasant girl named Marty South, who has always loved him. Marty is a plain girl whose only attribute is her beautiful hair. She is persuaded to sell this at the start of the story to a barber who is procuring it for Mrs Charmond, after Marty realises that Giles loves Grace and not her. She precipitates the final quarrel between Fitzpiers and Mrs Charmond by writing to Fitzpiers and telling him of the origin of most of Mrs Charmond's hair.
The novel was later classified by Hardy for the Wessex Edition of his works in the primary group of "Novels of Character and Environment". Yet despite it being regarded as one of Hardy's major novels, the novel is 'something of an anomaly', in comparison with the tragic depth of both its predecessor The Mayor of Casterbridge and its successor Tess of the D'Urbervilles . [3]
The novel reflects common Hardy themes: a rustic, evocative setting, poorly chosen marriage partners, unrequited love, social class mobility, and an unhappy, or at best equivocal, ending. As with most his other works, opportunities for fulfilment and happiness are forsaken or delayed. [4]
The Woodlanders marks the beginnings of controversy for Hardy's novels. At this point in his career he was established enough as a writer to take risks, especially in the areas of sexuality, such as marriage, divorce, marital fidelity, and the use of unconventional plots and tones, and seemingly immoral conclusions. [4] Hardy's portrayal of sexual morality led to him being identified with the 'Anti-marriage league'. [4]
That marriage is less-than-exclusive in the novel is highlighted most clearly through the words and thoughts of Grace Melbury; as heroine and betrayed wife of an unfaithful husband, she ought to represent the moral centre, but she openly acknowledges sexual and marital infidelity. On Fitzpiers' illness, she welcomes Mrs Charmond and Suke Damson into the bedroom with the unsubtle, "Indeed, you have a perfect right to go into his bedroom [...] Wives all, let's enter together!" When abandoned by him, she calls nature "bountiful" in so soon replacing him with another, tender form of "undiluted manliness" - Giles. [4]
Florence Emily Hardy, his second wife, recorded that in 1874 Hardy "put aside a woodland story", which ten years later evolved into The Woodlanders. [1] It was intended to be the successor to his 1874 Far from the Madding Crowd, but he laid the novel aside to work on other things. [4]
Hardy eventually decided to return to his "woodland story" after the editor of Macmillan's Magazine asked for a new serial in October 1884. It was published as a serial in this magazine and in the American Harper's Bazaar in 1887, followed by a three-volume first edition in March of the same year. [4]
The Woodlanders was widely praised. It was declared by the Saturday Review in April 1887 to be, "the best [novel] that Hardy has written", by Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch, "his loveliest if not his finest book", by William Lyon Phelps, "the most beautiful and most noble of Hardy's novels", and by A. Edward Newton, "one of the best novels of the last half century". [5] The late nineteenth century English author George Gissing read the novel in March 1888 "with much delight" but felt that the "human part is...painfully unsatisfactory". [6]
The novel remained a personal favourite of Hardy. Newman Flower recounted that Hardy named it to him as his "favourite novel", and 25 years after its publication, Hardy wrote that, "On taking up The Woodlanders and reading it after many years, I like it as a story best of all." [5]
Soon after the novel's publication, Hardy was approached by Jack Grein and Charles Jarvis for permission to adapt it for performance in 1889. But although various drafts were written, the project came to nothing. [7] It was not until 1913 that A.H. Evans' play in 3 acts was produced by the Dorchester Debating and Dramatic Society; the performance was also taken to London that year and to Weymouth in 1914. [8] Years after Hardy's death, David Horlock's adaptation was staged at Salisbury Playhouse in 1983 [9] and in the following century two dramatic adaptations of the novel went on tour in the West Country. In 2013 the New Hardy Players put on Emily Fearn's version, [10] and in 2016 the Hammerpuzzle Theatre Company put on Tamsin Kennard's version. [11]
The BBC made the novel into a film in 1970, starring Felicity Kendal and Ralph Bates. [12] This was followed by Phil Agland's The Woodlanders of 1997. [13]
There have also been musical settings of various kinds of passages from the novel. Patrick Hadley's Scene from The Woodlanders (1925) sets the final words for voice and chamber ensemble and was published by Oxford University Press in 1926. [14] The novel was next adapted as an opera by Stephen Paulus and premiered by Opera Theatre of Saint Louis in 1985. [15] A decade later it was performed at Oxford Playhouse in February 1995. A 15-minute Suite from the Woodlanders was also drawn from this by Paulus and in 1999 four descriptive passages were set by Anthony Payne as Scenes from “The Woodlanders (1999) for soprano, two clarinets, violin and cello. This was described by Payne himself as "a strange hybrid, midway between song cycle and tone poem". [16]
Tess of the d'Urbervilles: A Pure Woman is a novel by Thomas Hardy. It initially appeared in a censored and serialised version, published by the British illustrated newspaper The Graphic in 1891, then in book form in three volumes in 1891, and as a single volume in 1892. Although now considered a major novel of the 19th century, Tess of the d'Urbervilles received mixed reviews when it first appeared, in part because it challenged the sexual morals of late Victorian England.
Jude the Obscure is a novel by Thomas Hardy, which began as a magazine serial in December 1894 and was first published in book form in 1895. It is Hardy's last completed novel. The protagonist, Jude Fawley, is a working-class young man; he is a stonemason who dreams of becoming a scholar. The other main character is his cousin, Sue Bridehead, who is also his central love interest. The novel is concerned in particular with issues of class, education, religion, morality and marriage.
Brideshead Revisited: The Sacred & Profane Memories of Captain Charles Ryder is a novel by the English writer Evelyn Waugh, first published in 1945. It follows, from the 1920s to the early 1940s, the life and romances of Charles Ryder, especially his friendship with the Flytes, a family of wealthy English Catholics who live in a palatial mansion, Brideshead Castle. Ryder has relationships with two of the Flytes: Lord Sebastian and Lady Julia. The novel explores themes including Catholicism and nostalgia for the age of English aristocracy. A well-received television adaptation of the novel was produced in an 11-part miniseries by Granada Television in 1981. In 2008, it was adapted as a film.
George Robert Gissing was an English novelist, who published 23 novels between 1880 and 1903. In the 1890s he was considered one of the three greatest novelists in England, and by the 1940s he had been recognised as a literary genius. Gissing's best-known works have reappeared in modern editions. They include The Nether World (1889), New Grub Street (1891) and The Odd Women (1893). He retains a small but devoted group of followers.
Far from the Madding Crowd (1874) is Thomas Hardy's fourth published novel and his first major literary success. It was published on 23 November 1874. It originally appeared anonymously as a monthly serial in Cornhill Magazine, where it gained a wide readership.
Under the Greenwood Tree: A Rural Painting of the Dutch School is a novel by the English writer Thomas Hardy, published anonymously in 1872. It was Hardy's second published novel, and the first of what was to become his series of Wessex novels. Critics recognise it as an important precursor to his later tragic works, setting the scene for the Wessex that the author would return to again and again. Hardy himself called the story of the Mellstock Quire and its west-gallery musicians "a fairly true picture, at first hand, of the personages, ways, and customs which were common among such orchestral bodies in the villages of [the 1850s]".
The Hand of Ethelberta: A Comedy in Chapters is a novel by Thomas Hardy, published in 1876. It was written, in serial form, for The Cornhill Magazine, which was edited by Leslie Stephen, a friend and mentor of Hardy's. Unlike the majority of Hardy's fiction, the novel is a comedy, with both humour and a happy ending for the major characters and no suicides or tragic deaths. The late nineteenth century novelist George Gissing, who knew Hardy, considered it "surely old Hardy's poorest book".
The Return of the Native is Thomas Hardy's sixth published novel. It first appeared in the magazine Belgravia, a publication known for its sensationalism, and was presented in twelve monthly installments from 9 January to 19 December 1878. Because of the novel's controversial themes, Hardy had some difficulty finding a publisher; reviews, however, though somewhat mixed, were generally positive. In the twentieth century, The Return of the Native became one of Hardy's most popular and highly regarded novels.
Dombey and Son is a novel by English author Charles Dickens. It follows the fortunes of a shipping firm owner, who is frustrated at the lack of a son to follow him in his footsteps; he initially rejects his daughter's love before eventually becoming reconciled with her before his death.
Melbury Osmond is a village and civil parish in the county of Dorset in southern England. It lies approximately 7 miles (11 km) south of the Somerset town of Yeovil. The underlying geology is Cornbrash limestone, with adjacent Oxford clay. Within the clay can be found deposits of stone which can take on a very high polish, earning them the name "Melbury marble". The village is mentioned in the Domesday Book as a possession of the Arundell family, and remained so until the 19th century. The parish church, St. Osmund's, was totally rebuilt in 1745 and restored in 1888, although it has registers dating back to 1550. In the 2011 census the parish had a population of 199.
Devil's Cub is a Georgian romance novel written by Georgette Heyer. Set in 1780, it is the sequel to These Old Shades (1926). The book was published in 1932, and has not been out of print since. It is one of Heyer's most popular novels.
New Grub Street is a British novel by George Gissing published in 1891, which is set in the literary and journalistic circles of 1880s London. The story deals with the literary world that Gissing himself had experienced. Its title refers to the London street, Grub Street, which in the 18th century became synonymous with hack literature, although by Gissing's time, Grub Street itself no longer existed. Gissing revised and shortened the novel for a French edition of 1901.
Lucas Malet was the pseudonym of Mary St Leger Kingsley, a Victorian novelist. Of her novels, The Wages of Sin (1891) and The History of Sir Richard Calmady (1901) were especially popular. Malet scholar Talia Schaffer notes that she was "widely regarded as one of the premier writers of fiction in the English-speaking world" at the height of her career, but her reputation declined by the end of her life and today she is rarely read or studied. At the height of her popularity she was "compared favorably to Thomas Hardy, and Henry James, with sales rivaling Rudyard Kipling." Malet's fin de siecle novels offer "detailed, sensitive investigations of the psychology of masochism, perverse desires, unconventional gender roles, and the body."
Esther Waters is a novel by George Moore first published in 1894.
The Nether World (1889) is a novel written by the English author George Gissing. The plot concerns several poor families living in the slums of 19th-century London. Rich in naturalistic detail, the novel concentrates on the individual problems and hardships which result from the typical shortages experienced by the lower classes—want of money, employment and decent living conditions. The Nether World is pessimistic and concerns exclusively the lives of poor people: there is no juxtaposition with the world of the rich.
Melbury House is an English country house in the parish of Melbury Sampford near Evershot, Dorset. The Grade I listed mansion is the home of the Honorable Mrs Charlotte Townshend, a major landowner in east Dorset, through her mother, Theresa Fox-Strangways.
Random Harvest is a novel written by James Hilton, first published in 1941. Like previous Hilton works, including Lost Horizon and Goodbye, Mr. Chips, the novel was immensely popular, placing second on Publishers Weekly list of best-selling novels for the year, and it was published as an Armed Services Edition during WWII.
The Odd Women is an 1893 novel by the English novelist George Gissing. Its themes are the role of women in society, marriage, morals and the early feminist movement.
The Manxman is a novel by Hall Caine, first appearing as a serial in The Queen, The Lady's Newspaper and Court Chronicle between January and July 1894. Published as one volume in August 1894 by Heinemann, The Manxman ended the system of three-volume novels. A highly popular novel of its period, it was set in the Isle of Man and concerned a romantic triangle. The novel has as its central themes, the mounting consequences of sin and the saving grace of simple human goodness.
The Woodlanders public domain audiobook at LibriVox 