Thomas Hardy’s The Well-Beloved: A Sketch of a Temperament follows the celebrated sculptor Jocelyn Pierston over four decades as he quests for his “ideal woman,” believing the essence of perfect feminine beauty manifests in three generations of women on the rugged Isle of Slingers, a fictionalized version of Dorset’s Portland coast. Through Pierston’s romantic and artistic obsessions, Hardy interweaves themes of desire, artistic creation, and the elusive nature of fulfillment in one of his final novels. This Oxford Paperbacks edition is edited with an Introduction by Tom Hetherington, enhancing the text with fresh insights into Hardy’s intentions, context, and revisions, making it especially valuable for both scholars and dedicated readers of classic literature.
About the Author
Thomas Hardy (1840–1928) was a seminal English novelist and poet of the Victorian era whose works are celebrated for their richly drawn characters, deep psychological insight, and powerful depiction of rural life in the semi-fictional region of Wessex. Best known for classics like Far from the Madding Crowd, The Mayor of Casterbridge, Tess of the d’Urbervilles, and Jude the Obscure, Hardy’s stories often explore the tensions between individual desire and societal constraints, blending realism with philosophical inquiry. His later years were devoted largely to poetry, but The Well-Beloved, serialized in 1892 and published as a novel in 1897, stands as one of his last major fictional works, notable for its meditation on artistic idealism and human longing.
