Return of the Native (Wordsworth Classics)

This was a book, so the questions do not apply. The book is finally here, in perfect condition. Thanks.

Item is as describe. No problems with product and/or service.

Well, I finally finished it. Maybe better, I finally got beyond the first couple of chapters and read it through to the end. This was an assigned text in one of my high school English course. I think it was my Grade 12 class with Mr. Lloyd in the 1963-64 school year. I would have been 15 turning 16 is that class. I have absolutely no recollection of how the novel was taught beyond my inability to get through it as a 15-year-old. 54 years later, I just recently turned 79 and the novel has much more relevance to me now at the end of my life than then at the beginning. This novel is the only Hardy that I have read but the Internet speaks of a fatalism in it. I was puzzled when I read that as I was reading the novel but realized it is an apt description of the novel. It is not fatalistic in that people's lives are foredoomed but fatalistic in that people's lives make little difference. The heath was there before them and the heath will be there after they have gone. Eustachia and Windeve die and then their lives are taken up, interpreted and indeed molded as stories by the heath people. The barrow people. the Celtic tribes, the Romans ... lived on and left their traces on the heath. The current residents of the heath are not a culmination of history but just part of the process of the heath that carries on forever in terms of human lives. In this I see hardy as anticipating some of the concepts of postmodernism as I understand them. As a 70 year old, this novel has greater resonance for me than as a 15 year old in grade 12. maybe that is why I cannot recall any of the teaching of it so long ago. However, I remembered this novel and thought of it for all of those 54 intervening years. The teaching of it must have influenced me profoundly. it is a novel that I always wanted to read. I've read it now and I am glad that I did. It is a novel of depth that teaches a lot about life.

The catcher in the rye の中で主人公の少年がこの本のことを引用していたので読んでみました。 田舎の生活に飽き足らずパリでの生活にあこがれるユースタシア、パリでのビジネスと生活に疲れ田舎に安らぎを求めようとするクリム、プレーボーイで旅籠の主人のデーモン、どういう訳か全身真っ赤なベン（何故赤なのか、この種の人達のことをけっこう詳しく説明しています）、ユニークな人々が登場します。 イングランドの田舎（ハーデイお得意の場所）の景色、風習、生活、言葉遣いなどが生き生きと描かれています。 "Quiet Woman"という旅籠の名前も調べてみるとけっこう意味深いものがあるみたいです。 夕方丘の上で火を焚く習慣("Bonfire")が詳しく描写されていたりもします。 ベン、とデーモンが暗闇の中で蛍の幼虫？（glowworm)を石の上に円形に並べその光でサイコロ賭博をするシーンは笑いを誘います。 昔の本なのと（たぶん）方言のせいでちょっと英語が読みにくい部分もあるのですが、ドラマチックなストーリーを楽しめました。

I am still reading this book, this one being my second, the first was The Woodlanders, which I loved and thought that I may be disappointed, but not at all. I am new to reading his books. I visited the house where he live as a child and was spellbound, so beautiful there, and I can understand where he found the inspiration to write about the old ways and the wonderful characters,I almost felt like I was in the woodland overhearing the gossip in Dorset dialect. The Return of the Native is equally endearing, and the reader gets caught up in the complex human relationships and the well described life of Egdon Heath.

One of the best unabridged edition at a reasonable price. Don't trust the cover though. You might end up with a one different than the image put up.

Hardy's best according to him....and me...

I brought that as a gift for someone. She loved it.