The Return of the Native by Thomas Hardy [ILLUSTRATED HARDCOVER] 1980 • The Franklin Library

The Return of the Native by Thomas Hardy and illustrated by Ben F. Wohlberg

COLLECTOR'S EDITION [1980] THE FRANKLIN LIBRARY

Book is in excellent condition.  Some minor shelf wear; reads like new. 

In Hardy's The Return of the Native, Eustacia Vye criss-crosses the wild Egdon Heath, eager to experience life to the full in her quest for "music, poetry, passion, war." She marries Clym Yeobright, a native of the heath, but his idealism frustrates her romantic ambitions and her discontent draws others into a tangled web of deceit and unhappiness. Early readers responded to Hardy's "insatiably observant" descriptions of the heath, a setting that for D. H. Lawrence provided the "real stuff of tragedy." For modern readers, the tension between the mythic setting of the heath and the modernity of the characters challenges our freedom to shape the world as we wish; like Eustacia, we may not always be able to live our dreams.