A very interesting and different classic with some comical and dramatic elements and complex characters. I haven't seen the divide between classes explored in this way and it was just fascinating and fun, especially since it isn't a black and white portrayal.
I'm not sure yet how I feel about the end

My aim has been to read through the entire works of Thomas Hardy as he is one of my favored authors. I am very intrigued by him as a person and awed by the details of life from the mid 1800's that would be lost entirely to us were it not for there being recorded in his novels with such poetic detail

I have a fatal weakness for the minor or forgotten work that may turn out to be the proverbial diamond in the dustcart (actually, I think I just made up that proverb). In that spirit, I have been making my way in the past few years through Thomas Hardy’s less visited back list: the novels he himself

Subtitled “a comedy in chapters”, Hardy’s fifth novel production is not a tremendous piece of sustained prose writing, nor a comedy, unless your sense of humour is Sahara-in-summer-dry. As the unforgiving introduction to the Macmillian edition states, Hardy here writes in his “Harrison Ainsworth sty