The Short Fiction of Thomas Hardy

Thomas Hardy is best remembered for his novels, but across his career he also wrote dozens of short stories, and this collection gathers them. Most unfold in his invented Wessex, the rural southwest of England where old customs, rigid class lines, and stubborn passions collide. In ‘A Changed Man,’ a dashing cavalry officer startles everyone by abandoning the army to become a clergyman; other tales turn on chance meetings, thwarted love, and the small ironies that quietly reshape a life. Hardy brings the same fatalism and feeling for the countryside that mark his longer books, compressed here into sharper and often stranger episodes. Readers who know Tess or Jude will recognize the same world in miniature. This free PDF and EPUB edition collects Hardy’s short fiction in a single volume.