The Well-Beloved (Oxford World's Classics)

As the last of Hardy's novels to be published, The Well-Beloved has generated great scholarly interest recently. Partly autobiographical, it tells the story of the sculptor Jocelyn Pierston, whose search for the ideal woman in both Portland and London leads him into courtships with a Portland woman, her daughter and her grand-daughter. This edition is the first to recover Hardy's final revisions to the text.