A Pair of Blue Eyes

A Pair of Blue Eyes

Thomas Hardy

5.0
Comment(s)
239
View
42
Chapters

A Pair of Blue Eyes is a novel by Thomas Hardy, published in 1873. The book describes the love triangle among a young woman, Elfride Swancourt, and her two suitors from very different backgrounds. Stephen Smith is a socially inferior but ambitious young man who adores her and with whom she shares a country background. Henry Knight is the respectable, established, older man who represents London society. Elfride finds herself caught in a battle between her heart, her mind and the expectations of those around her - her parents and society. The novel is notable for the strong parallels to Hardy and his first wife Emma Gifford. When Elfride's father finds that his guest and candidate for his daughter's hand, architect's assistant Stephen Smith, is the son of a mason, he immediately orders him to leave. This was the third of Hardy's novels to be published and the first to bear his name. The term "cliffhanger" is considered to have originated from this novel, which was first serialised in Tinsley's Magazine between September 1872 and July 1873. At one stage Hardy leaves Henry Knight literally hanging off a cliff staring into the stony eyes of a trilobite embedded in the rock.

A Pair of Blue Eyes Preface

'A violet in the youth of primy nature,Forward, not permanent, sweet not lasting,The perfume and suppliance of a minute;No more.'The following chapters were written at a time when the craze for indiscriminate church-restoration had just reached the remotest nooks of western England, where the wild and tragic features of the coast had long combined in perfect harmony with the crude Gothic Art of the ecclesiastical buildings scattered along it, throwing into extraordinary discord all architectural attempts at newness there.

To restore the grey carcases of a mediaevalism whose spirit had fled, seemed a not less incongruous act than to set about renovating the adjoining crags themselves.Hence it happened that an imaginary history of three human hearts, whose emotions were not without correspondence with these material circumstances, found in the ordinary incidents of such church- renovations a fitting frame for its presentation.The shore and country about 'Castle Boterel' is now getting well known, and will be readily recognized. The spot is, I may add, the furthest westward of all those convenient corners wherein I have ventured to erect my theatre for these imperfect little dramas of country life and passions; and it lies near to, or no great way beyond, the vague border of the Wessex kingdom on that side, which, like the westering verge of modern American settlements, was progressive and uncertain.This, however, is of little importance. The place is pre- eminently (for one person at least) the region of dream and mystery. The ghostly birds, the pall-like sea, the frothy wind, the eternal soliloquy of the waters, the bloom of dark purple cast, that seems to exhale from the shoreward precipices, in themselves lend to the scene an atmosphere like the twilight of a night vision.One enormous sea-bord cliff in particular figures in the narrative; and for some forgotten reason or other this cliff was described in the story as being without a name. Accuracy would require the statement to be that a remarkable cliff which resembles in many points the cliff of the description bears a name that no event has made famous.T. H.March 1899

Continue Reading

Other books by Thomas Hardy

More

You'll also like

Reborn Heiress: The Wolf's Vengeance Deal

Reborn Heiress: The Wolf's Vengeance Deal

Sibeal Sallese
5.0

I lay paralyzed on stiff white sheets, a prisoner in my own skin, listening to the rain lash against the window like nails on a coffin. My father, Elmore Franco, didn't even look at my face as he checked his clipboard. He just listened to the steady, monotonous beep of the heart monitor-the only thing proving I was still alive. Without a hint of remorse, he pulled a pen from his pocket and signed the Do Not Resuscitate order. My stepmother, Ophelia, stepped out from behind him, wearing my favorite pearl necklace and smelling of cloying perfume. She leaned close to my ear to whisper the truth that turned my blood to ice. "It was the tea, darling. Just like your mother. A slow, tasteless poison." She chuckled as she revealed that my fiancé, Bryce, had a two-year-old son with my sister, Daniela. My inheritance had been funding their secret life for years, and now that the money was secure, I was an inconvenience they were finally scrubbing away. As my father yanked the power cord from the wall, the beeping died, and the darkness swallowed me whole. I was being murdered by my own flesh and blood, used as a bank account until I was no longer needed. I died in that sterile room, drowning in the realization that every person I ever loved was a monster who had been waiting for me to take my last breath. Then, I gasped. I woke up in a luxury hotel suite surrounded by silk sheets, five years in the past-the very morning of my wedding. Next to me lay Basile Delgado, the "Wolf of Wall Street" and my family's most dangerous enemy. In my first life, I ran from this room in a panic and lost everything. This time, I looked at the man who would eventually destroy my father's empire and decided to join him. "I'm not leaving, Basile. Marry me. Right now. Today."

The Billionaire's Secret Twins: Her Revenge

The Billionaire's Secret Twins: Her Revenge

Shearwater
4.5

I was four months pregnant, weighing over two hundred pounds, and my heart was failing from experimental treatments forced on me as a child. My doctor looked at me with clinical detachment and told me I was in a death sentence: if I kept the baby, I would die, and if I tried to remove it, I would die. Desperate for a lifeline, I called my father, Francis Acosta, to tell him I was sick and pregnant. I expected a father's love, but all I got was a cold, sharp blade of a voice. "Then do it quietly," he said. "Don't embarrass Candi. Her debutante ball is coming up." He didn't just reject me; he erased me. My trust fund was frozen, and I was told I was no longer an Acosta. My fiancé, Auston, had already discarded me, calling me a "bloated whale" while he looked for a thinner, wealthier replacement. I left New York on a Greyhound bus, weeping into a bag of chips, a broken woman the world considered a mistake. I couldn't understand how my own father could tell me to die "quietly" just to save face for a party. I didn't know why I had been a lab rat for my family’s pharmaceutical ambitions, or how they could sleep at night while I was left to rot in the gray drizzle of the city. Five years later, the doors of JFK International Airport slid open. I stepped onto the marble floor in red-soled stilettos, my body lean, lethal, and carved from years of blood and sweat. I wasn't the "whale" anymore; I was a ghost coming back to haunt them. With my daughter by my side and a medical reputation that terrified the global elite, I was ready to dismantle the Acosta empire piece by piece. "Tell Francis to wash his neck," I whispered to the skyline. "I'm home."

Chapters
Read Now
Download Book
 A Pair of Blue Eyes A Pair of Blue Eyes Thomas Hardy Romance
“A Pair of Blue Eyes is a novel by Thomas Hardy, published in 1873. The book describes the love triangle among a young woman, Elfride Swancourt, and her two suitors from very different backgrounds. Stephen Smith is a socially inferior but ambitious young man who adores her and with whom she shares a country background. Henry Knight is the respectable, established, older man who represents London society. Elfride finds herself caught in a battle between her heart, her mind and the expectations of those around her - her parents and society. The novel is notable for the strong parallels to Hardy and his first wife Emma Gifford. When Elfride's father finds that his guest and candidate for his daughter's hand, architect's assistant Stephen Smith, is the son of a mason, he immediately orders him to leave. This was the third of Hardy's novels to be published and the first to bear his name. The term "cliffhanger" is considered to have originated from this novel, which was first serialised in Tinsley's Magazine between September 1872 and July 1873. At one stage Hardy leaves Henry Knight literally hanging off a cliff staring into the stony eyes of a trilobite embedded in the rock.”
1

Preface

11/11/2017

2

The Persons

11/11/2017

3

Chapter 1

11/11/2017

4

Chapter 2

11/11/2017

5

Chapter 3

11/11/2017

6

Chapter 4

11/11/2017

7

Chapter 5

11/11/2017

8

Chapter 6

11/11/2017

9

Chapter 7

11/11/2017

10

Chapter 8

11/11/2017

11

Chapter 9

11/11/2017

12

Chapter 10

11/11/2017

13

Chapter 11

11/11/2017

14

Chapter 12

11/11/2017

15

Chapter 13

11/11/2017

16

Chapter 14

11/11/2017

17

Chapter 15

11/11/2017

18

Chapter 16

11/11/2017

19

Chapter 17

11/11/2017

20

Chapter 18

11/11/2017

21

Chapter 19

11/11/2017

22

Chapter 20

11/11/2017

23

Chapter 21

11/11/2017

24

Chapter 22

11/11/2017

25

Chapter 23

11/11/2017

26

Chapter 24

11/11/2017

27

Chapter 25

11/11/2017

28

Chapter 26

11/11/2017

29

Chapter 27

11/11/2017

30

Chapter 28

11/11/2017

31

Chapter 29

11/11/2017

32

Chapter 30

11/11/2017

33

Chapter 31

11/11/2017

34

Chapter 32

11/11/2017

35

Chapter 33

11/11/2017

36

Chapter 34

11/11/2017

37

Chapter 35

11/11/2017

38

Chapter 36

11/11/2017

39

Chapter 37

11/11/2017

40

Chapter 38

11/11/2017