Wessex Tales

Last updated

First edition title page Wessex Tales.jpg
First edition title page

Wessex Tales is an 1888 collection of tales written by English novelist and poet Thomas Hardy, many of which are set before Hardy's birth in 1840.

Contents

In the various short stories, Hardy writes of the true nature of nineteenth-century marriage and its inherent restrictions, the use of grammar as a diluted form of thought, the disparities created by the role of class status in determining societal rank, the stance of women in society and the severity of even minor diseases causing the rapid onset of fatal symptoms prior to the introduction of sufficient medicinal practices. A focal point of all the short stories is that of social constraints acting to diminish one's contentment in life, necessitating unwanted marriages, repression of true emotion and succumbing to melancholia due to constriction within the confines of 19th-century perceived normalcy. [1]

Contents

Initially, in 1888, the collection contained five stories, all previously published in periodicals....

For the 1896 reprinting, Hardy added a sixth...

But in 1912, he reversed that decision, moving "An Imaginative Woman" to another collection, Life's Little Ironies (1894), while at the same time transferring two of the latter collection's stories...

...to Wessex Tales, [2] for a final total of seven stories.

Dramatic adaptations

Six of the short stories were adapted as television dramas, forming the BBC2 anthology series Wessex Tales:

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Thomas Hardy</span> English novelist and poet (1840–1928)

Thomas Hardy was an English novelist and poet. A Victorian realist in the tradition of George Eliot, he was influenced both in his novels and in his poetry by Romanticism, including the poetry of William Wordsworth. He was highly critical of much in Victorian society, especially on the declining status of rural people in Britain, such as those from his native South West England.

<i>Skeleton Crew</i> (short story collection) 1985 short story collection by Stephen King

Skeleton Crew is a collection of short fiction by American writer Stephen King, published by Putnam in June 1985. A limited edition of a thousand copies was published by Scream/Press in October 1985 (ISBN 978-0910489126), illustrated by J. K. Potter, containing an additional short story, "The Revelations of 'Becka Paulson", which had originally appeared in Rolling Stone magazine, and was later incorporated into King's 1987 novel The Tommyknockers. The original title of this book was Night Moves.

<i>Tess of the dUrbervilles</i> 1891 novel by Thomas Hardy

Tess of the d'Urbervilles: A Pure Woman Faithfully Presented 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. Though now considered a major 19th century English novel and Hardy's magnum opus, Tess of the d'Urbervilles received mixed reviews when it first appeared, in part because it challenged the sexual morals of late Victorian England. Tess was portrayed as a fighter not only for her rights, but also for the rights of others.

<i>Far from the Madding Crowd</i> 1874 novel by Thomas Hardy

Far from the Madding Crowd (1874) is Thomas Hardy's fourth novel and his first major literary success. It originally appeared anonymously as a monthly serial in Cornhill Magazine, where it gained a wide readership.

<i>The Bloody Chamber</i> Collection of short stories by Angela Carter

The Bloody Chamber is a collection of short fiction by English writer Angela Carter. It was first published in the United Kingdom in 1979 by Gollancz and won the Cheltenham Festival Literary Prize. The stories share a theme of being closely based upon fairytales or folk tales. However, Carter has stated:

My intention was not to do 'versions' or, as the American edition of the book said, horribly, 'adult' fairy tales, but to extract the latent content from the traditional stories.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Malcolm Hulke</span> British television writer and author

Malcolm Ainsworth Hulke was a British television writer and author of the industry "bible" Writing for Television in the 70s. He is remembered chiefly for his work on the science fiction series Doctor Who although he contributed to many popular television series of the era.

<i>A Medicine for Melancholy</i>

A Medicine for Melancholy (1959) is a collection of short stories by American writer Ray Bradbury. It was first published in the UK by Hart-Davis in 1959 as The Day It Rained Forever with a slightly different list of stories. All of the included stories were previously published.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">The Ransom of Red Chief</span> 1907 short story by O. Henry

"The Ransom of Red Chief" is a short story by O. Henry first published in the July 6, 1907, issue of The Saturday Evening Post. It follows two men who kidnap and demand a ransom for a wealthy Alabamian's son. Eventually, the men are driven crazy by the boy's spoiled and hyperactive behavior, and they pay the boy's father to take him back.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Anthology series</span> Broadcast entertainment with self-contained stories and different characters in each episode

An anthology series is a radio, television, video game or film series that spans different genres and presents a different story and a different set of characters in each different episode, season, segment, or short. These usually have a different cast in each episode, but several series in the past, such as Four Star Playhouse, employed a permanent troupe of character actors who would appear in a different drama each week. Some anthology series, such as Studio One, began on radio and then expanded to television.

"Markheim" is a short story by Robert Louis Stevenson, originally prepared for the Pall Mall Gazette in 1884, but published in 1885 in The Broken Shaft: Tales of Mid-Ocean as part of Unwin's Christmas Annual. The story was later published in Stevenson's collection The Merry Men and Other Tales and Fables (1887).

<span class="mw-page-title-main">AQA Anthology</span>

The Assessment and Qualifications Alliance has produced Anthologies for GCSE English and English Literature studied in English schools. This follows on from AQA's predecessor organisations; Northern Examinations and Assessment Board (NEAB) and Southern Examining Group (SEG).

Stanley Bernard Ellin was an American mystery writer. Ellin was born in Brooklyn, New York. After a brief tenure in the Army, at the insistence of his wife, Ellin began writing full time. While his novels are acclaimed, he is best known for his short stories. In May 1948, his first sale, and one of Ellin's most famous short stories, "The Specialty of the House", appeared in Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine.

<i>The Letter</i> (play)

The Letter is a 1927 play by W. Somerset Maugham, dramatised from a short story that first appeared in his 1926 collection The Casuarina Tree. The story was inspired by the real-life Ethel Proudlock case which involved the wife of the headmaster of Victoria Institution in Kuala Lumpur who was convicted in a murder trial after shooting dead a male friend in April 1911. She was eventually pardoned.

<i>Three Blind Mice</i> (radio play and short story)

Three Blind Mice is the name of a half-hour radio play written by Agatha Christie, which was later adapted into a television film, a short story, and a popular stage production.

<i>Long After Midnight</i>

Long After Midnight is a short story collection by American writer Ray Bradbury. Several of the stories are original to this collection. Others originally appeared in the magazines Planet Stories, Collier's Weekly, Playboy, Esquire, Welcome Aboard, Other Worlds, Cavalier, Gallery, McCall's, Woman's Day, Harper's, Charm, Weird Tales, Eros, and Penthouse.

<i>Lifes Little Ironies</i>

Life's Little Ironies is a collection of tales written by Thomas Hardy, originally published in 1894, and republished with a slightly different collection of stories, for the Uniform Edition in 1927/8.

<i>A Group of Noble Dames</i>

A Group of Noble Dames is an 1891 collection of short stories written by English author Thomas Hardy. The stories are contained by a frame narrative in which ten members of a club each tell one story about a noble dame in the 17th or 18th century. Hardy included this work with his "Romances and fantasies".

Rhys Adrian Griffiths was a British playwright and screenwriter. He is best known for his radio plays, which are characterised by their emphasis upon dialogue rather than narrative.

"Barbara of the House of Grebe" is the second of ten short stories in Thomas Hardy's frame narrative A Group of Noble Dames. It is told by the old surgeon. The story was published in The Graphic in 1890 and in book form in 1891.

A Changed Man and Other Tales is a collection of twelve tales written by Thomas Hardy. The collection was originally published in book form in 1913, although all of the tales had been previously published in newspapers or magazines from 1881 to 1900. There are eleven short stories and a novella The Romantic Adventures of a Milkmaid. At the end of the book there is a map of the imaginary Wessex of Hardy's novels and poems. Six of the stories were published before 1891 and therefore lacked international copyright protection when the collection began to be sold in October 1913.

References

  1. "AQA - Anthology Zone - Thomas Hardy". anthology.aqa.org.uk. Retrieved 2016-05-03.
  2. Malcolm, Cheryl Alexander; Malcolm, David (2008). "Thomas Hardy: Wessex Tales : A Companion to the British and Irish Short Story : Blackwell Reference Online". Blackwell Publishing Inc. Retrieved 2014-05-21.
  3. "Wessex Tales". December 12, 1973. p. 57 via BBC Genome.