Two on a Tower

Thomas Hardy

iyn, 2012 · Penguin UK

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With an essay by Rosemary Sumner.

'Then they proceeded to scan the sky, roving from planet to star, from single stars to double stars, from double to coloured stars...'

Hardy's atmospheric, moving story of star-crossed lovers shows human beings at the mercy of forces far beyond their control, setting a tragic drama of human passion and conflict against a background of vast stellar space and scientific discovery. Two on a Tower tells the story of Lady Constantine, who breaks all the rules of decorum when she falls in love with the beautiful youth Swithin St Cleeve, her social inferior and ten years her junior. Together, in an ancient monument converted into an astronomical observation tower, they create their own private universe - until the pressures of the outside world threaten to destroy it.

The Penguin English Library - 100 editions of the best fiction in English, from the eighteenth century and the very first novels to the beginning of the First World War.

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Formerly a prize-winning architectural student, Thomas Hardy (1840-1928), went on to become a prolific novelist and poet. Against the backdrop of the 'partly real, partly dream-country' of Wessex in which so many of his novels are set, Two on a Tower explores a range of nineteenth-century concerns: sexuality, class, history, Darwinism, science and religion.

Hardy's other novels Under the Greenwood Tree, Far From the Madding Crowd, The Return of the Native, The Mayor of Casterbridge, Tess of the D'Urbervilles and Jude the Obscure are also published in the Penguin English Library.