Description

First published in 1895.

Young Jude Fawley longs to better himself and go to university, but poverty forces him into a job as a stonemason and an unhappy marriage. When his wife leaves him, Jude moves to Christminster, determined to follow his academic dreams. There he meets and falls for his free-spirited cousin, Sue Bridehead. But far from the road to happily ever after, devastation, violence and alienation relentlessly unfurl throughout their lives.

In this heartbreaking story, Hardy shows the disastrous effects of social prejudice and oppression. One of Hardy’s Wessex novels, Jude the Obscure caused so much outrage when it was published in 1895 that it was the last novel he ever wrote.