A Pair of Blue Eyes (World's Classics S.)

by Alan Manford (Editor), Alan Manford (Editor), Thomas Hardy (Author)

• Used

  Paperback
  1985

  $3.40

  This novel is of special interest because of the strong autobiographical parallels between the characters and circumstances of Stephen Smith and Elfride Swancourt and those of Hardy and his first wife Emma Gifford. This was the third of Hardy's novels to be published and the first to bear his name.

• Used

  Paperback
  1986

  $3.25

• New

  Paperback
  1995

  $6.78

  With a new Introduction by Cedric Watts, Research Professor of English, University of Sussex. A Pair of Blue Eyes, though early in the sequence of Hardy's novels, is lively and gripping. Its dramatic cliff-hanging episode, for example, is at once tense, ironic, feministic and erotic. With settings in Wessex and London, the novel also has some strongly autobiographical features, as the blue-eyed heroine, Elfride Swancourt, is based largely on Emma Gifford, who became Thomas Hardy's first wife. Elfride's vivacious nature attracts several lovers, but she is beset by sexual prejudice, and the ensuing ironies reveal the constraints of her times. A Pair of Blue Eyes provides an engaging and moving experience for today's readers.