Tess of the d'Urbervilles – Thomas Hardy

"A pure woman faithfully presented."

The innocent and impoverished Tess Durbeyfield is driven by family misfortune into the path of two men—the manipulative Alec d'Urberville and the idealistic Angel Clare. Betrayed by the cruelty of one and the rigidity of the other, she is caught in a tragic web of social prejudice and inexorable fate.

Thomas Hardy's masterpiece is a heartbreaking indictment of Victorian morality and the sexual double standard. Set against the fading beauty of the rural English landscape, it is a powerful, haunting story of a woman destroyed by the world's judgment.