This classic novel tells the story of how the poor rural couple John and Joan Durbeyfield become convinced that they are descended from the ancient family of d’Urbervilles. They encourage their innocent daughter Tess to cement a connection with the d’Urberville family, including their unprincipled son Alec, with tragic consequences. “A Pure Woman Faithfully Presented,” as Hardy subtitled the novel, represented a direct challenge to conventional Victorian notions of sexuality and femininity.

This is a revised, updated, and expanded Broadview edition that highlights a feminist interpretation of the novel in an extensive introduction. The range of historical appendices (including contemporary articles, letters, maps, news stories, and reviews) will greatly enhance a reader’s understanding of the text.

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Sarah E. Maier is Associate Professor of English and Comparative Literature and University Teaching Scholar at the University of New Brunswick.

“The second edition of Tess of the d’Urbervilles by Sarah E. Maier brings together a wealth of contextual materials, contemporary reviews, extracts from Hardy’s notebooks, and nineteenth-century debates about women, inviting the reader to respond to the challenge of the novel’s subtitle: ‘A Pure Woman Faithfully Presented.’ It reprints two separately published stories, ‘Saturday Night in Arcady’ and ‘The Midnight Baptism,’ which Hardy salvaged from the expurgated text published in the Graphic and reinstated in the three-volume edition of 1891. Meticulously annotated and impressively documented, this new edition will be indispensable to students and scholars alike.” — Joanne Shattock, Victorian Studies Centre, University of Leicester