It is bleak but compelling, and the loving descriptions of the Wessex countryside and its inhabitants are stunning.
All of Thomas Hardy’s works provide wonderful, moving portrayals of rural Victorian life, but Tess is his most famous. It is the story of ‘a pure woman faithfully presented’, who seeks to better herself but, due to chance, the unkindness of the world and her own honest mistakes, falls further and further into poverty and disrepute and is eventually driven to desperation. It is bleak but compelling, and the loving descriptions of the Wessex countryside and its inhabitants are stunning.