Under the Greenwood Tree

by Thomas Hardy

Overview

'At sight of him had the pink of her cheeks increased, lessened, or did it continue to cover its normal area of ground? It was a question meditated several hundreds of times by her visitor in after-hours - the meditation, after wearying involutions, always ending in one way, that it was impossible to say'

The arrival of two newcomers in the quiet village of Mellstock arouses a bitter feud and leaves a convoluted love affair in its wake. While the Reverend Maybold creates a furore among the village's musicians with his decision to abolish the church's traditional 'string choir' and replace it with a modern mechanical organ, the new schoolteacher, Fancy Day, causes an upheaval of a more romantic nature, winning the hearts of three very different men - a local farmer, a church musician and Maybold himself. Under the Greenwood Tree follows the ensuing maze of intrigue and passion with gentle humour and sympathy, deftly evoking the richness of village life, yet tinged with melancholy for a rural world that Hardy saw fast disappearing.

The Penguin English Library - 100 editions of the best fiction in English, from the eighteenth century and the very first novels to the beginning of the First World War.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780141973913
Publisher:	Penguin UK
Publication date:	11/29/2012
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	224
File size:	659 KB
Age Range:	3 Months

About the Author

Formerly a prize-winning architectural student, Thomas Hardy (1840-1928) went on to become a prolific novelist and poet. Under the Greenwood Tree was the first of Hardy's novels to be set in Wessex, and the 'partly real, partly dream-country' forms a background to the novel that is both wild and provincial.

Hardy's novels Far From the Madding Crowd, The Return of the Native, Two on a Tower, The Mayor of Casterbridge, Tess of the D'Urbervilles and Jude the Obscure are also published in the Penguin English Library.

Date of Birth:

June 2, 1840

Date of Death:

January 11, 1928

Place of Birth:

Higher Brockhampon, Dorset, England

Place of Death:

Max Gate, Dorchester, England

Education:

Served as apprentice to architect James Hicks

Table of Contents

List of illustrations; General editor's preface; Acknowledgements; Chronology; Abbreviations; Introduction; Under the Greenwood Tree; Variants in punctuation and styling; End-of-line hyphenation; Editorial emendations; Appendix A. Hardy's preface to the Wessex Edition; Appendix B. Under the Greenwood Tree and The Poor Man and the Lady; Appendix C. Detailed analysis of the manuscript; Appendix D. Chapter-division in the manuscript; Appendix E. Watermarks in the manuscript; Appendix F. The compositors of the first edition; Appendix G. Robson's compositors in A Pair of Blue Eyes; Appendix H. Differences between the first and second editions; Appendix I. Printing orders for Under the Greenwood Tree Published by Chatto and Windus and Macmillan; Appendix J. Frontispieces; Appendix K. Description of substantive editions; Explanatory notes.

Editorial Reviews

This early Hardy novel tells the story of a pastoral romance in the small Wessex village of Mellstock. Jamie Parker’s friendly, resonant tone adds warmth to a surprisingly cheerful work by an author known for his dour stories. Parker’s use of vocal variation in delivering Hardy’s descriptive prose guides listeners smoothly through the plot. He also demonstrates mastery in his renderings of local country dialects. The conversations between the choir members, who include an interesting range of ages and characterizations, are especially well performed, and his singing of various songs also enlivens the text. Overall, Parker’s charming performance adds much personality to this Hardy classic. D.M.W. © AudioFile 2014, Portland, Maine

NOVEMBER 2014 - AudioFile