The Well-Beloved
Thomas Hardy
Jun 2024 · Interactive Media · Narrated by James Harrington
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Audiobook
5 hr 53 min
Unabridged
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About this audiobook
Explore the elusive quest for ideal love in "The Well-Beloved" by Thomas Hardy. This compelling novel follows the life of Jocelyn Pierston, a sculptor obsessed with capturing the essence of his perfect muse, the "Well-Beloved." As he pursues his ideal through three generations of women—all remarkably alike—on the Isle of Slingers, Jocelyn grapples with the nature of love, art, and reality. Hardy's introspective tale delves into the complexities of human desire and the perpetual search for the unattainable, blending romance with profound psychological insight.
About the author
Thomas Hardy, OM, was an English author of the naturalist movement, although in several poems he displays elements of the previous romantic and enlightenment periods of literature, such as his fascination with the supernatural. He regarded himself primarily as a poet and composed novels mainly for financial gain. The bulk of his work, set mainly in the semi-fictional land of Wessex, delineates characters struggling against their passions and circumstances. Hardy's poetry, first published in his 50s, has come to be as well regarded as his novels, especially after The Movement of the 1950s and 1960s. The term cliffhanger is considered to have originated with Thomas Hardy's serial novel A Pair of Blue Eyes in 1873. In the novel, Hardy chose to leave one of his protagonists, Knight, literally hanging off a cliff staring into the stony eyes of a trilobite embedded in the rock that has been dead for millions of years. This became the archetypal — and literal — cliff-hanger of Victorian prose.
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