Jude The Obscure Diversion Classics

Featuring an appendix of discussion questions, this Diversion Classics edition is ideal for use in book groups and classrooms. A penniless orphan with dreams of becoming a scholar, Jude Fawley is instead thrust into a life of hard labor. Forced to abandon his passion and working as a mason in the shadow of the University he wishes to attend, he meets his true love, his cousin, Sue Bridehead. Trapped between their feelings for one another and a society that condemns the relationship, Jude and Sue’s hopes are painfully snuffed out. Thomas Hardy’s final complete novel is an unflinching look at a life choked by the strict morals of an oppressive age and a must-read take on the human condition.

This carefully crafted ebook: "JUDE THE OBSCURE (British Classics Series)" is formatted for your eReader with a functional and detailed table of contents. Jude the Obscure tells the story of Jude Fawley, a stonemason who dreams of becoming a scholar, and Sue Bridehead, his cousin and also his central love interest. The novel is concerned in particular with issues of class, education, religion and marriage. Jude is a working-class young man who lives in a village in southern England who yearns to be a scholar at "Christminster", a city modelled on Oxford. As a youth, Jude teaches himself Classical Greek and Latin in his spare time, while working in his great-aunt's bakery, with the hope of entering university. After a failed marriage, Jude moves to Christminster and supports himself as a mason while studying alone. There, he meets and falls in love with his free-spirited cousin, Sue, who also experiences failed marriage. The couple end up living together and have children, but they are socially ostracized and experience great deal of trouble. Thomas Hardy (1840-1928) 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, especially William Wordsworth and Charles Dickens. Like Dickens, he was highly critical of much in Victorian society, though Hardy focused more on a declining rural society. While Hardy regarded himself primarily as a poet, initially he gained fame as the author of novels, including Far from the Madding Crowd, Tess of the d'Urbervilles and Jude the Obscure. Most of his fictional works were set in the semi-fictional region of Wessex. They explored tragic characters struggling against their passions and social circumstances.

This eBook features the unabridged text of ‘Jude the Obscure’ from the bestselling edition of ‘The Complete Works of Thomas Hardy’. Having established their name as the leading publisher of classic literature and art, Delphi Classics produce publications that are individually crafted with superior formatting, while introducing many rare texts for the first time in digital print. The Delphi Classics edition of Hardy includes original annotations and illustrations relating to the life and works of the author, as well as individual tables of contents, allowing you to navigate eBooks quickly and easily. eBook features: * The complete unabridged text of ‘Jude the Obscure’ * Beautifully illustrated with images related to Hardy’s works * Individual contents table, allowing easy navigation around the eBook * Excellent formatting of the textPlease visit www.delphiclassics.com to learn more about our wide range of titles

"Jude the Obscure," by Thomas Hardy, is part of the "Barnes & Noble Classics"" "series, which offers quality editions at affordable prices to the student and the general reader, including new scholarship, thoughtful design, and pages of carefully crafted extras. Here are some of the remarkable features of "Barnes & Noble Classics" New introductions commissioned from today's top writers and scholars Biographies of the authors Chronologies of contemporary historical, biographical, and cultural events Footnotes and endnotes Selective discussions of imitations, parodies, poems, books, plays, paintings, operas, statuary, and films inspired by the work Comments by other famous authors Study questions to challenge the reader's viewpoints and expectations Bibliographies for further reading Indices & Glossaries, when appropriate All editions are beautifully designed and are printed to superior specifications; some include illustrations of historical interest. "Barnes & Noble Classics "pulls together a constellation of influences--biographical, historical, and literary--to enrich each reader's understanding of these enduring works. Virginia Woolf called him "the greatest tragic writer among English novelists," but Thomas Hardy was so distressed by the shocked outrage that greeted "Jude the Obscure" in 1895 that he decided to quit writing novels. For in telling the story of Jude Fawley, whose many attempts to rise above his class are crushed by society or the forces of nature, Hardy had attacked Victorian society's most cherished institutions--marriage, social class, religion, and higher education. A poor villager, Jude Fawley longs to study at the elite University of Christminster, but his ambitions are thwarted by class prejudice--and an earthy country girl who tricks him into marriage by pretending to be pregnant. Entrapped in a loveless marriage, he becomes a stonemason and falls in love with his cousin--the intellectual, free-spirited Sue Bridehead, who is also unhappy in marriage. Sue leaves her husband to live with Jude and eventually bears his children out of wedlock. Their poverty and the weight of society's disapproval begin to take their toll on the couple, forcing them into a shattering downward spiral that ends in one of the most shocking scenes in all of literature. A stunning masterpiece, "Jude the Obscure" is Hardy's bleakest and most personal novel. Amy M. King is an Assistant Professor of Literature at the California Institute of Technology, and the author of "Bloom: The Botanical Vernacular in the English Novel," forthcoming from Oxford University Press. She is also the author of articles on eighteenth- and nineteenth-century British literature and culture, and has taught widely in the English novel at Haverford College and Caltech. King received her doctorate in 1998 from Harvard University in English and American Literature and Language.

Classics in Extremis reimagines classical reception. Its contributors explore some of the most remarkable, hard-fought and unsettling claims ever made on the ancient world: from the coal-mines of England to the paradoxes of Borges, from Victorian sexuality to the trenches of the First World War, from American public-school classrooms to contemporary right-wing politics. How does the reception of the ancient world change under impossible strain? Its protagonists are 'marginal' figures who resisted that definition in the strongest terms. Contributors argue for a decentered model of classical reception: where the 'marginal' shapes the 'central' as much as vice versa – and where the most unlikely appropriations of antiquity often have the greatest impact. What kind of distortions does the model of 'centre' and 'margins' produce? How can 'marginal' receptions be recovered most effectively? Bringing together some of the leading scholars in the field, Classics in Extremis moves beyond individual case studies to develop fresh methodologies and perspectives on the study of classical reception.

Jude Fawley, a poor stone carver with aspirations toward an academic career, is thwarted at every turn and is finally forced to give up his dreams of a university education. He is tricked into an unwise marriage, and when his wife deserts him, he begins a relationship with a free-spirited cousin. With this begins the descent into bleak tragedy as the couple alternately defy and succumb to the pressures of a deeply disapproving society.

The schoolmaster was leaving the village, and everybody seemed sorry. The miller at Cresscombe lent him the small white tilted cart and horse to carry his goods to the city of his destination, about twenty miles off, such a vehicle proving of quite sufficient size for the departing teacher's effects. For the schoolhouse had been partly furnished by the managers, and the only cumbersome article possessed by the master, in addition to the packing-case of books, was a cottage piano that he had bought at an auction during the year in which he thought of learning instrumental music. But the enthusiasm having waned he had never acquired any skill in playing, and the purchased article had been a perpetual trouble to him ever since in moving house.