Wessex Tales

In Wessex Tales, his first collection of short stories, Hardy recorded the legends, superstitions, local customs, and lore of a Wessex that was rapidly passing out of memory. But these well-loved Tales also portray the social and economic stresses of Dorset in the 1880s, and reveal Hardy's growing scepticism about the possibility of achieving personal and sexual satisfaction in the modern world. By turns humorous, ironic, macabre, and elegiac, these seven stories show the full range of Hardy's story-telling genius.