Short Fiction

Thomas Hardy

• Publisher: Caelwick Press
• Year: 2026
• eBook ISBN:
  9783102786812
• Topic: Literatura
• Subtopic: Clásicos

Like a number of his contemporaries, Thomas Hardy published many short stories apart from his much better-known body of novels. Although they weren't as highly regarded by critics as his novels were, appreciation has grown for his small-scale fiction. Hardy himself thought they were worth preserving, supervising four collections during his lifetime which he revisited and tweaked over the years and editions. Their subject matter coheres well with his novels. Almost without exception they narrate tales of Wessex, Hardy's beloved region in the southeast of England, which largely overlaps with today's counties of Devon, Somerset, and Dorset. Many are narrated by embedded characters, recalling romances, tragedies, and the occasional triumph from bygone years. Hardy's familiar themes of misplaced ambition and thwarted love recur frequently. Hardy published forty-four short stories in his lifetime (including two collaborations), and two more were published posthumously. One of the posthumously published stories is not yet in the public domain, and print editions of two other stories ("Our Exploits at West Poley" and "The Thieves Who Couldn't Help Sneezing") couldn't be located; the remaining forty-three stories are collected here, ordered mostly by date of first publication with the exception of the sequence found in Hardy's 1891 collection A Group of Noble Dames . Thomas Hardy (died 1928) was a major literary figure of the early 20th century. Their work has endured across generations and continues to be read and studied worldwide. As a work of classic literary fiction, Short Fiction exemplifies the narrative craft and social insight that defined great storytelling of its era. Literary fiction of this period was characterized by careful attention to character psychology, social milieu, and the moral questions that animated public discourse.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Table of Contents
• How I Built Myself a House
• Destiny and a Blue Cloak
• The Distracted Preacher
• Fellow-Townsmen
• What the Shepherd Saw
• A Tradition of Eighteen Hundred and Four
• The Three Strangers
• The Romantic Adventures of a Milkmaid
• Interlopers at the Knap
• A Tryst at an Ancient Earth Work
• A Mere Interlude
• Alicia’s Diary
• The Waiting Supper
• A Tragedy of Two Ambitions
• The Melancholy Hussar of the German Legion
• For Conscience’ Sake
• A Few Crusted Characters
• The Doctor’s Legend
• Chapter 19
• Chapter 20
• Chapter 21
• Chapter 22
• Chapter 23
• Chapter 24
• Chapter 25
• Chapter 26
• Chapter 27
• To Please His Wife
• The Son’s Veto
• On the Western Circuit
• The Fiddler of the Reels
• Master John Horseleigh, Knight
• An Imaginative Woman
• I
• A Committeeman of “The Terror”
• The Duke’s Reappearance
• The Grave by the Handpost
• A Changed Man
• Enter a Dragoon
• Chapter 40
• Old Mrs. Chundle