Wessex Tales was the first collection of Hardy's short stories, and they reflect the experience of a novelist at the height of his powers. These seven tales, in which characters and scenes are imbued with a haunting realism, show considerable diversity of content, form and style, and range from fantasy to realism and from tragedy to comedy. In insisting on the unusual nature of any story worth the telling, and with his gift for irony and compassion, Hardy achieves more in the genre of the short story than any English novelist before him.

Thomas Hardy was a great novelist and a great poet. In both mediums he shows remarkable consistency, not in the sense that everything is equally good - he could be a very uneven writer - but in that all his work, from first to last, displays the same habits of vision and imagination. The mind-print is utterly distinctive. It can be said of Hardy, as of few other novelists, that many of his narratives could be identified as his work on the basis of the opening sentence alone. So it comes about that Wessex Tales, by no means one of his major productions, shows enough of his characteristic skills to provide a useful introduction to his fiction at large. If these stories do not have the weight or the passion of the major novels,they convey something of their flavour and singularity.

INTRODUCTION

PREFACE

THE THREE STRANGERS

A TRADITION OF EIGHTEEN HUNDRED AND FOUR

THE MELANCHOLY HUSSAR OF THE GERMAN LEGION

THE WITHERED ARM

A Lorn Milkmaid

The Young Wife

A Vision

A Suggestion

Conjuror Trendle

A Second Attempt

A Ride

A WatersideHermit

A Rencounter

FELLOW-TOWNSMEN

INTERLOPERS AT THE KNAP

THE DISTRACTED PREACHER

How His Cold Was Cured

How He Saw Two Other Men

The Mysterious Greatcoat

At the Time of the New Moon

How They Went to Lulwind Cove

The Great Search at Nether-Moynton

The Walk to Warm"ell Cross; and Afterwards

NOTES