The Return of the Native: Introduction by John Bayley (Everyman's Library Classics Series) - Hardcover

" Most of Hardy' s novels, and particularly the early ones, have a Shakespearean power of creating a unique world and climate of being . . . "The Return of the Native" is . . . thoughtful, valedictory, poetic, tinged with the somberness of an uncertainty which seems to well up from the depths of the author' s own subconscious . . . Hardy' s sense of the tragic life of human beings, mere small fragments of consciousness in a vast uncaring universe, comes directly from his own youthful awareness of the place and circumstances described in the novel." - from the Introduction by John Bayley

Most of Hardy s novels, and particularly the early ones, have a Shakespearean power of creating a unique world and climate of being . . . The Return of the Native is . . . thoughtful, valedictory, poetic, tinged with the somberness of an uncertainty which seems to well up from the depths of the author s own subconscious . . . Hardy s sense of the tragic life of human beings, mere small fragments of consciousness in a vast uncaring universe, comes directly from his own youthful awareness of the place and circumstances described in the novel. from the Introduction by John Bayley"

"Most of Hardy's novels, and particularly the early ones, have a Shakespearean power of creating a unique world and climate of being . . . The Return of the Native is . . . thoughtful, valedictory, poetic, tinged with the somberness of an uncertainty which seems to well up from the depths of the author's own subconscious . . . Hardy's sense of the tragic life of human beings, mere small fragments of consciousness in a vast uncaring universe, comes directly from his own youthful awareness of the place and circumstances described in the novel." -from the Introduction by John Bayley