‘A Pair of Blue Eyes’ is the third novel by renowned British author Thomas Hardy and the first that he did not publish anonymously. The book contains many of the plot devices and themes that Hardy would explore further in his subsequent books: love, mischance, betrayal, loyalty and dueling allegiances.
The story revolves around the lovely Elfride Swancourt who is caught in a classic dilemma: she has two suitors, one poor, ambitious and ardent – Stephen Smith – and one respectable and wealthy – Henry Knight. Unable to choose between them and unsure of which would be best for her future, Elfride’s inability to decide between the two men threatens to scuttle her relationship with both.
At once a beautifully written love story and a tragic tale of missed opportunities, ‘A Pair of Blue Eyes’ is an early peek at the literary gifts of Thomas Hardy, who would create some of the finest novels in English literary history. It is presented here in its original and unabridged format.
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Thomas Hardy (1840-1928) was an English novelist and poet best known for his dramatic novels set in the west of England in a fictionalized area known as Wessex. Hardy came from humble origins (his father was a stonemason) but he received encouragement in his education from his mother and attended school in Dorchester until he began an apprenticeship at 16, studying to become an architect. Eventually, he would move to London and continue his education at King’s College London and worked on various architectural projects through the 1860’s. But young Hardy had a love of literature and attempted to get an early novel published in as early as 1867. He could not find a publisher and abandoned the book, finally publishing his first two novels anonymously in the early 1870’s. His publications of Far from the Madding Crowd in 1874 finally brought Hardy the success and literary renown he craved and his subsequent books, The Return of the Native (1878), The Mayor of Casterbridge (1886) and especially Tess of the d’Urbevilles (1891) proved to be enormously successful, if controversial because of their themes of class division, sex, religion and marriage. This would come to a head with his publication of Jude the Obscure in 1895, which brought strong condemnation from the conservative Victorian public as well as church officials. The notoriety and negative press surrounding the publication naturally only caused the book to become even more popular. By the 1900’s, Hardy’s financial and literary legacy was secure and he spent the rest of his life devoted almost entirely to writing poetry, including a number of significant war poems inspired by the Boer Wars and World War I. In December of 1927, he became ill with pleurisy and died on January 11, 1928 at his home in Dorchester at the age of 87.
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