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Jude the Obscure

by Thomas Hardy

Category: Fiction

Status: Available

Source: Public Domain — Project Gutenberg

About This Book

"Jude the Obscure" by Thomas Hardy is a novel published in 1895. It follows Jude Fawley, a working-class stonemason who dreams of becoming a scholar at Christminster. His ambitions become entangled with his passionate but troubled relationship with his cousin, Sue Bridehead. Through failed marriages, social ostracism, and personal tragedy, the novel explores the crushing weight of Victorian society's institutions—particularly marriage, religion, and class barriers—on those who dare to defy convention. (This is an automatically generated summary.)

About the Author

English · 1840–1928

He wrote sad stories set in the English countryside. His novels deal with fate, love, and the limits placed on ordinary people.

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JUDE THE OBSCURE

by Thomas Hardy

CONTENTS

PREFACE

PREFACE

The history of this novel (whose birth in its present shape has been much retarded by the necessities of periodical publication) is briefly as follows. The scheme was jotted down in 1890, from notes made in 1887 and onward, some of the circumstances being suggested by the death of a woman in the former year. The scenes were revisited in October, 1892; the narrative was written in outline in 1892 and the spring of 1893, and at full length, as it now appears, from August, 1893, onward into the next year; the whole, with the exception of a few chapters, being in the hands of the publisher by the end of 1894. It was begun as a serial story in HARPER’S MAGAZINE at the end of November, 1894, and w

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About This Edition

This edition of Jude the Obscure by Thomas Hardy is catalogued on Libreya under Fiction and runs approximately 144,428 words — about 722 minutes of reading at an average pace. It is sourced from Project Gutenberg, the world's oldest digital library of public domain literature, founded in 1971 by Michael Hart, and every text on Libreya has been verified to be free of copyright restrictions in the United States. You can view the original Project Gutenberg edition here.

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About Classic Fiction

Classic fiction represents the highest achievements of literary imagination. The novels in this genre have shaped how generations of readers understand human nature, society, and the fundamental questions of existence. Reading 19th and early 20th-century novels offers far more than historical interest: these stories explore love, ambition, morality, and identity with an insight that remains startlingly relevant today. Authors like Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, Austen, Hardy, and Dickens wrote for readers much like us — people trying to make sense of a complicated world — and their observations on class, relationships, power, and conscience carry across centuries with barely diminished force. Classic fiction is also where the novel as an art form reached some of its greatest heights: innovative narrative structures, deeply realized characters, and prose styles that reward slow, attentive reading. These are not museum pieces. They are living works that continue to be discussed, adapted, and argued over because they capture something essential and enduring about human experience.

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