His performance will please all fans of classic British literature. Many thanks to Mr Praetzellis for his wonderful reading of Hardy's novel.

Angel deserts Tess when he finds the innocent country girl he fell in love with is not so pure. After days of pleading, Tess gives in to Angel and consents to marry him. She is tested when she meets Angel, the clever son of a priest, and falls in love with him. Throughout the rest of this fascinating novel, Tess is tormented by guilt at the thought of her impurity and vows to never marry. d'Urberville and leaves his house, returning home to have their child, who subsequently dies. Thus begins a tale of woe in which a wealthy man cruelly mistreats a poor girl. When it is discovered that the low-class Durbeyfield family is in reality the d'Urbervilles, the last of a famous bloodline that dates back hundreds of years, the mother sends her eldest daughter, Tess, to beg money from relations with the obvious desire that Tess wed the rich Mr. The novel centers around a young woman who struggles to find her place in society. (Summary by Adrian Praetzellis)įor further information, including links to M4B audio book, online text, reader information, RSS feeds, CD cover or other formats (if available), please go to the LibriVox catalog page for this recording.įor more free audiobooks or to become a volunteer reader, please visit Hardy was an unflinching observer and in TESS has left us some unforgettable vignettes of rural life in late 19th-century England: the slow death of a flock of wounded pheasants, the monotony of field labour under an iron gray sky, and the itinerant farm worker’s seasonal round. He was a controversial writer whose work often showed the result of flouting the rigid Victorian moral code - his novel JUDE THE OBSCURE was (allegedly) burned by the Bishop of Wakefield for its shocking content. Born near Dorchester, Thomas Hardy (1840-1928) set most of his stories in the region between Berkshire and Dorset in the fictional county of Wessex. One of the greatest English tragic novels, TESS OF THE D’URBERVILLES (1891) is the story of a “pure woman” who is victimized both by conventional morality and its antithesis. Librivox recording of Tess of the d'Urbervilles by Thomas Hardy.

Tess D'Urberville by Thomas Hardy