Wessex Tales — Thomas Hardy

Wessex Tales was the first collection of Hardy s short stories and they reflect the experience of a novelist at the height of his powers These seven tales in which characters and scenes are imbued with a haunting realism show considerable diversity of content form and style and range from fantasy to realism and from tragedy to comedy Hardy tests the skill of any narrator Not only must the reader dramatize differences of age sex region and class among the characters who inhabit the fictional county of Wessex in the last century but the straight narration must also showcase the eloquence of Hardy s prose