The Woodlanders

Written by Thomas Hardy

Narrated by Steven Green

The Woodlanders (1887) is a novel by Thomas Hardy. An honest woodsman wants to marry his childhood sweetheart, Grace. Although they have been informally betrothed for some time, her father has made financial sacrifices to give his adored only child a superior education and no longer considers him good enough for her. When the new doctor—a well-born and handsome young man takes an interest in her, her father does all he can to make her forget the woodsman, and to encourage what he sees as a brilliant match. Against her better instinct she marries the doctor, who soon begins an affair with a rich widow. The affair gets discovered. The couple becomes progressively more estranged and the man is assaulted by his father-in-law after he accidentally reveals his true character to him, so he deserts to Europe with the widow. Grace realizes that she has only ever really loved the woodsman but as there is no possibility of divorce, she feels that her love seems hopeless…

• Language: English
• Publisher: Audioliterature
• Release date: Feb 28, 2019

Thomas Hardy

Thomas Hardy was born in 1840 in Dorchester, Dorset. He enrolled as a student in King’s College, London, but never felt at ease there, seeing himself as socially inferior. This preoccupation with society, particularly the declining rural society, featured heavily in Hardy’s novels, with many of his stories set in the fictional county of Wessex. Since his death in 1928, Hardy has been recognised as a significant poet, influencing The Movement poets in the 1950s and 1960s.