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The Return of the Native
by Thomas Hardy
Category: Fiction
Status: Available
Source: Public Domain — Project Gutenberg
About This Book
"The Return of the Native" by Thomas Hardy is a novel published in 1878. Set entirely on the wild Egdon Heath over the span of a year, it follows the intertwined fates of several characters trapped by passion and circumstance. When Clym Yeobright returns from Paris, the beautiful but restless Eustacia Vye sees him as her escape from the desolate heath. Their marriage sets off a chain of events involving thwarted desires, family estrangement, and fateful misunderstandings that will test everyone's loyalties and dreams. (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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About This Edition
This edition of The Return of the Native by Thomas Hardy is catalogued on Libreya under Fiction and runs approximately 141,623 words — about 708 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.
On Libreya, the text has been carefully formatted for comfortable reading on any screen — with consistent chapter navigation, adjustable font sizes, and four reading themes: light, sepia, dark, and night mode. Your reading position is saved automatically when you sign in, so you can pick up exactly where you left off across any device. The original text has not been altered in any way; what you read here is the same work as it appeared in its original published form.
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.
