Wessex Tales

1888 story collection by Thomas Hardy

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First edition title page

Wessex Tales is an 1888 collection of tales written by English novelist and poet Thomas Hardy, many of which are set before Hardy's birth in 1840.

In the various short stories, Hardy writes of the true nature of nineteenth-century marriage and its inherent restrictions, the use of grammar as a diluted form of thought, the disparities created by the role of class status in determining societal rank, the stance of women in society and the severity of even minor diseases causing the rapid onset of fatal symptoms prior to the introduction of sufficient medicinal practices. A focal point of all the short stories is that of social constraints acting to diminish one's contentment in life, necessitating unwanted marriages, repression of true emotion and succumbing to melancholia due to constriction within the confines of 19th-century perceived normalcy.[1]

## Contents

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Initially, in 1888, the collection contained five stories, all previously published in periodicals:

* "The Three Strangers" (1883)
* "The Withered Arm" (1888)
* "Fellow-Townsmen" (1880)
* "Interlopers at the Knap" (1884)
* "The Distracted Preacher" (1879)

For the 1896 reprinting, Hardy added a sixth...

* "An Imaginative Woman" (1894)

However, in 1912 he reversed that decision, moving "An Imaginative Woman" to another collection, Life's Little Ironies (1894), while at the same time transferring two of the latter collection's stories, "A Tradition of Eighteen Hundred and Four" (1882) and "The Melancholy Hussar of the German Legion" (1890) to Wessex Tales,[2] for a final total of seven stories.

## Dramatic adaptations

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Six of the short stories were adapted as television dramas, forming the BBC2 anthology series Wessex Tales:

* "The Withered Arm" (7 November 1973, BBC2), adapted by Rhys Adrian, directed by Desmond Davis, and starring Billie Whitelaw.
* "Fellow-Townsmen" (14 November 1973, BBC2), adapted by Douglas Livingstone, directed by Barry Davis, and starring Jane Asher.
* "A Tragedy of Two Ambitions" (21 November 1973, BBC2), adapted by Dennis Potter, directed by Michael Tuchner, and starring John Hurt. This story is from Hardy's collection Life's Little Ironies.
* "An Imaginative Woman" (28 November 1973, BBC2), adapted by William Trevor, directed by Gavin Millar, and starring Claire Bloom.
* "The Melancholy Hussar" (5 December 1973, BBC2), adapted by Ken Taylor, directed by Mike Newell, and starring Ben Cross.
* "Barbara of the House of Grebe" (12 December, 1973 BBC2), adapted by David Mercer, directed by David Jones, and starring Nick Brimble and Ben Kingsley.[3] This story is from Hardy's collection A Group of Noble Dames.

## References

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1. ^ "AQA - Anthology Zone - Thomas Hardy". anthology.aqa.org.uk. Retrieved 2016-05-03.
2. ^ Malcolm, Cheryl Alexander; Malcolm, David (2008). "Thomas Hardy: Wessex Tales : A Companion to the British and Irish Short Story : Blackwell Reference Online". Blackwell Publishing Inc. Retrieved 2014-05-21.
3. ^ "Wessex Tales". December 12, 1973. p. 57 – via BBC Genome.

## External links

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* Wessex Tales at Project Gutenberg
* Wessex Tales public domain audiobook at LibriVox
* Wessex Tales at IMDb

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Thomas Hardy

Novels|

* The Poor Man and the Lady (1867)
* Desperate Remedies (1871)
* Under the Greenwood Tree (1872)
* A Pair of Blue Eyes (1873)
* Far from the Madding Crowd (1874)
* The Hand of Ethelberta (1876)
* The Return of the Native (1878)
* The Trumpet-Major (1880)
* A Laodicean (1881)
* Two on a Tower (1882)
* The Mayor of Casterbridge (1886)
* The Woodlanders (1887)
* Tess of the d'Urbervilles (1891/92)
* Jude the Obscure (1895)
* The Well-Beloved (1897)

Short story collections|

* Wessex Tales (1888)
* A Group of Noble Dames (1891)
* Life's Little Ironies (1894)
* A Changed Man and Other Tales (1913)

Short stories|

* "The Three Strangers" (1883)
* "A Mere Interlude" (1885)
* "Alicia's Diary" (1887)
* "Barbara of the House of Grebe" (1891)
* "The Fiddler of the Reels" (1893)
* "A Tragedy of Two Ambitions" (1894)

Poetry collections|

* Wessex Poems and Other Verses (1898)
* Poems of the Past and the Present (1901)
* Time's Laughingstocks (1909)
* Poems 1912–13
* Satires of Circumstance (1914)
* Moments of Vision (1917)
* Late Lyrics (1922)
* Human Shows (1925)
* Winter Words (1928)

Poems|

* "Neutral Tones" (1898)
* "The Darkling Thrush" (1900)
* "The Ruined Maid" (1901)
* "The Respectable Burgher" (1901)
* "The Man He Killed" (1902)
* "A Trampwoman's Tragedy" (1903)
* "The Convergence of the Twain" (1915)
* "The Blinded Bird" (1916)

Plays|

* The Dynasts (1904–1908)
* The Famous Tragedy of the Queen of Cornwall (1923)

Life|

* Thomas Hardy's Cottage
* Max Gate
* Emma Gifford (first wife)
* Florence Dugdale (second wife)

Related|

* Thomas Hardy's Wessex
* Egdon Heath
* Winter Words (song cycle)

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