Jude the Obscure

Thomas Hardy, 1895

Victorian novels

A village boy's admiration for learning begins a story about aspiration and the barriers surrounding it.

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Length: 53 chapters
Reading time: About 10 hr 4 min
Words: 143,786

About the book

Jude watches his schoolmaster leave for Christminster, helping with the practical difficulty of moving a piano. The departure gives a distant city emotional importance before it is more than a name, joining education to the hope of another kind of life.

Hardy follows ambition from the position of someone with little money or social standing. The novel places private hopes within arrangements of work, family and public judgment, asking how much room a person has to shape a life when institutions and attachments make competing claims.

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Victorian novels

This edition

Text from Standard Ebooks, who proofread and typeset it and dedicate their edition to the public domain. Thomas Hardy died more than 70 years ago, so the work is out of copyright in the UK. Includes the original preface.