The Distracted Preacher and Other Tales

The darkly passionate short stories of Thomas Hardy are compelling explorations of love, social class, superstition and legend. This collection contains many of his finest and most representative, and includes "The Withered Arm," an eerie depiction of arcane witchcraft in nineteenth-century England; "Barbara of the House of Grebe," in which a beautiful man's tragic disfigurement by fire is savagely exploited by his rival; "The Son's Veto," showing the cruelty of an educated youth towards his ignorant but tender mother; and "The Distracted Preacher," the story of one man's conflict between heartfelt love and his own sense of moral and civic duty. By turns moving and poetic, and surprisingly modern and brutally macabre, these eloquent tales may be numbered among the greatest creations of Hardy's genius.

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Hardy's Life and Works: a Chronology
Introduction
1. Thomas Hardy as a Short Story Writer
2. The Selected Stories
Hardy's Wessex
Map
Key to Place-Names
The Distracted Preacher
A Mere Interlude
The Withered Arm
A Tragedy of Two Ambitions
The Melancholy Hussar of the German Legion
Barbara of the House of Grebe
On the Western Circuit
The Son's Veto
The Fiddler of the Reels
An Imaginative Woman
The Grave by the Handpost
Hardy's General Preface to the Wessex Edition of 1912
Bibliographical Note
Note on the Text
Explanatory Notes