Jude the Obscure

Thomas Hardy

Jul 1999 · Broadview Press

About this ebook

When Thomas Hardy’s Jude the Obscure appeared in 1895, it immediately caused scandal and controversy. Its frank treatment of Jude’s sexual relationships with Arabella and Sue, its scathing criticisms of late-Victorian hypocrisy, its depiction of the “New Woman,” and its attacks on “holy wedlock” and religious bigotry outraged numerous reviewers; one called the book “Jude the Obscene.” Others saw it as brilliantly progressive in its ideas and techniques. Vivid and complex, satiric and harrowing, this novel marked the culmination of Hardy’s development as a leading novelist of the cultural transition from the Victorian to the Modernist era. The Broadview edition restores the original, controversial 1895 text.

Ratings and reviews

Another Hardy tear jerker

About the author

Cedric Watts is a professor in the English Department at the University of Sussex, and the internationally-renowned author of fifteen critical and scholarly books, including The Deceptive Text; A Preface to Keats; Joseph Conrad: A Literary Life; Literature and Money; and Thomas Hardy: “Jude the Obscure.” As well as being editor of this Broadview edition of Jude the Obscure, he is the editor of Broadview’s edition of Conrad’s Lord Jim.