The Hand of Ethelberta

by Thomas Hardy

Overview

The tale of an opportunistic yet ultimately loyal adventuress who begins life humbly and ends as the wife of a rakish aristocrat, The Hand of Ethelberta is a book that will surprise readers of Hardy's more familiar, and darker, Wessex novels. A conscious parody of the popular romances of the period, Hardy combines elements of domestic melodrama, earnest bildungsroman, ludicrous Restoration comedy, Gothic intrigues, and drawing-room farce with calculated irreverence for literary form. As Tim Dolin writes in his Introduction, Ethelberta "lives out a racier version of the Cinderella story in which the scullery-maid abandons the prince for the more glamorous role of fairy-godmother".

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781522780922
Publisher:	CreateSpace Publishing
Publication date:	12/16/2015
Pages:	254
Product dimensions:	8.50(w) x 11.00(h) x 0.53(d)

About the Author

Thomas Hardy (1840-1928) wrote novels and poetry, much of which is set in the semi-imaginary county of Wessex. His novels include Far From the Madding Crowd (1874), The Return of the Native (1878), The Mayor of Casterbridge(1886), Tess of the D'Urbervilles(1891) and Jude the Obscure (1895). He published his first volume of poetry, Wessex Poems, in 1898 and continued to publish collections of poems until his death.

Patricia Ingham is Senior Research Fellow and Reader at St Anne's College, Oxford. She has written on the Victorian novel and on Hardy in particular. She is the General Editor of all of Hardy's fiction in the Penguin Classics and has edited Gaskell's North and South for the series.

Date of Birth:

June 2, 1840

Date of Death:

January 11, 1928

Place of Birth:

Higher Brockhampon, Dorset, England

Place of Death:

Max Gate, Dorchester, England

Education:

Served as apprentice to architect James Hicks

What People are Saying About This

From the Publisher

"The Hand of Ethelberta is … a portrait of two artists – Ethelberta Petherwin and Thomas Hardy …"
—Tim Dolin

Editorial Reviews

"The Hand of Ethelberta is … a portrait of two artists – Ethelberta Petherwin and Thomas Hardy …"
—Tim Dolin

From the Publisher