Why read Tess of the D Urbervilles?

Book cover of Tess of the D Urbervilles

Book description

HarperCollins is pround to present its new range of best-loved, essential classics.

'My life looks as if it had been wasted for want of chances! When I see what you know, what you have read, and seen, and thought, I feel what a nothing I am!'

Challenging the hypocrisy and…

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Why read it?

2 authors picked Tess of the D Urbervilles as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?

Joy V. Sheridan

Author

Tess of the D'Urbervilles has the dual quality of a being great work of literature, and a polemic which faces the issues of poverty and oppression—an incredibly honest, balanced portrayal of all aspects of rural life. Many of my personal problems reflected the traumas faced by the tragic heroine.

From Joy's list on a sense of history, oppression and exploitation.

Benji Carr

Author

This is my favorite classic novel, partly because I’m a fan of soap operas featuring long-suffering heroines. No one in fiction suffers more than Tess Durbeyfield, and no one deserves it less than she does. Tess is pure and good, yet Hardy assures she is never boring.

The doomed scoundrel here is an aristocrat named Alec D’Urberville, no relation to her. When she is sent to Alec’s doorstep because her dad thinks their families might be connected, it leads to a litany of disasters for Tess. There’s a rape, a scandalous pregnancy, and much misfortune. Because society in the 1870s…

From Benji's list on that destroy some devious scoundrel.