IN the present novel, as in one or two others of this series which involve the question of matrimonial divergence, the immorta! puzzle--given the man and woman, how to find a basis for their sexual relation--is left where it stood; and it is tacitly assumed for the purposes of the story that no doubt of the depravity of the erratic heart who feels some second person to be better suited to his or her tastes than the one with whom he has contracted to live, enters the head of reader or writer for a moment. ...

Passion and money, beauty and ambition, these are the opening themes in The Woodlanders, a novel revolving around a small village community coming to terms with a radically changing world.

Plain Marty South, a young country girl mature beyond her years, endures her love for Giles Winterborne in silence. He works in partnership with George Melbury, the local timber-merchant and chief man of business in the area.

Giles has deep unspoken feelings for Mr Melbury's daughter Grace who has been away at boarding school and now returns to Little Hintock an educated young woman with modern ideas. Giles belongs to a past she no longer wants to be a part of.and she is soon attracted to the new, handsome young doctor in the village, Edred Fitzpiers. As they all follow their lonely course, their lives become inextricably intertwined.

First published in 1887, The Woodlanders, which in later years Hardy came to regard as his favourite story, reflects Hardy's own changing attitude to the past and recognition of the dawn of a modern, dramatically different age.