Thomas Hardy

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Newlyweds Somerset and Paula arrive amid village comment while Sir William De Stancy, brooding over a broken match, confronts the dissolute Dare about family disgrace.
An unknown person assembles the De Stancy heirlooms in the Long Gallery and sets them on fire, and Paula, having just received Charlotte’s letter announcing withdrawal to a Protestant sisterhood, learns of the conflagration.
After assessing losses and that the stone shell remains, the couple decide against rebuilding the castle and resolve to erect a new, modern house beside the ruin.

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A provincial love-triangle forms around Elfride Swancourt, her early lover Stephen Smith and the reserved Henry Knight; after a perilous cliff incident Elfride and Knight become engaged.
Elfride conceals a prior secret liaison and near-elopement; the dying Mrs Jethway’s posthumous letter accusing Elfride of betraying her son awakens Knight’s jealousy, he renounces her and departs.
Elfride then marries Lord Luxellian but dies abroad; Knight and Smith return to learn the truth and are left remorseful and bereaved.

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Aeneas Manston confesses to accidentally killing his first wife in a jealous outburst, concealing the body in an outhouse oven and later marrying Cytherea Graye after arranging a substitution with Anne Seaway; his admission ultimately clears the women suspected of complicity. Miss Aldclyffe, on her deathbed, discloses a long-hidden maternal past connected to Cytherea, and by a shrewd will (naming “the wife of Aeneas Manston”) the estate is settled under Pa’son Raunham’s management while Cytherea and her husband Edward Springrove live reconciled and content.

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Bathsheba Everdene’s entanglements—Boldwood’s morbid fixation and her impulsive liaison and marriage with Sergeant Troy—produce jealousy, concealment and social scandal. The exposure of Troy’s prior connection with Fanny Robin, Fanny’s death and Troy’s furtive return culminate in Boldwood’s shooting of Troy and subsequent confinement on grounds of insanity. Gabriel Oak’s steady industry and fidelity secure Bathsheba’s lands and, after the tragedy, lead to their understated marriage and a re‑establishment of domestic order.

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Sue swears on the New Testament and, despite visible aversion, yields to Richard and is taken back into his house.
Jude, wasting away, is told by Mrs. Edlin that Sue has resumed conjugal relations; he broods bitterly over ruined ambitions and rails against social conventions.
Arabella, who flirts with Dr. Vilbert, leaves Jude alone to die amid town festivities; he expires calling for Sue, and at his funeral Arabella and Mrs. Edlin quarrel over whether Sue has found peace.

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Jack Winter, jilted by Harriet Palmley, breaks into her aunt’s house to recover his letters, is apprehended on strong circumstantial evidence, tried for burglary and executed.
Georgy Crookhill swaps clothes with a farmer, flees with horse and some money, is captured and momentarily mistaken for a military deserter but receives only a light sentence while the actual deserter escapes.
Netty Sargent fakes her dead uncle’s signature to secure the copyhold and marry Jasper Cliff, later suffers domestic unhappiness, and the account closes with Mr. Lackland’s melancholic visit to a changed Longpuddle.

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Angel Clare returns intent on reconciliation but finds Tess estranged and under the influence of Alec d’Urberville.
Tess kills Alec, reunites with Angel and they flee—hiding in an empty manor and at Stonehenge—until she surrenders.
She is apprehended and ultimately executed, and Clare later mourns her with Liza-Lu.

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After a wet night and the cavalry’s withdrawal from Quatre-Bras, the Anglo-Allied and French armies deploy on the slopes of Mont Saint‑Jean and engage in protracted fighting—artillery, infantry and repeated cavalry charges concentrate on Hougomont, La Haye Sainte and the Allied centre.
Ney’s cavalry and d’Erlon’s columns repeatedly assault Wellington’s squares and reserves while Wellington holds firm; Blücher’s Prussians, after difficult marching, strike the French right at Plancenoit and help turn the tide.
The Imperial Guard’s final assault is repulsed, the French routs, Napoleon withdraws into despondent reflection, and the dramatis personae close with a philosophical chorus on suffering, chance and the impersonal force driving history.

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A public accusation that Michael Henchard once sold his wife ruins his reputation and fortunes while Lucetta, scandalised, marries Donald Farfrae and later dies after a humiliating skimmington exposes her past.
Henchard alternately menaces and repents, shelters Elizabeth‑Jane (whom he long passed off as his daughter), but Captain Newson returns, reclaims her and she marries Farfrae; Henchard dies alone, his terse last wishes observed.

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Yeobright gives Charley a lock of Eustacia’s hair; they watch Thomasin and Venn’s wedding from a screened window, and Clym returns solitary, lamenting his failure to heed his late mother. He soon adopts the role of itinerant, open‑air moral lecturer—delivering non‑dogmatic "Sermons on the Mount" from Rainbarrow and elsewhere—which meets mixed critical response but general sympathy.

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A false alarm of a French landing sends the county into uproar; Festus Derriman’s boastful bravado culminates in his attempt to force Anne Garland, who escapes on his horse and is rescued by John Loveday.
Bob Loveday is nearly impressed, then volunteers and wins distinction at Trafalgar; Anne endures jealousy and sorrow but unexpectedly inherits Oxwell Hall when Uncle Benjy’s will is found.
John, who loves Anne and sacrifices for his brother, restrains himself for Bob’s sake and at last departs with his regiment to the Peninsula, bidding a farewell that proves final.

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Dr Edgar Fitzpiers becomes entangled with Felice Charmond, neglecting his wife Grace and provoking her father George Melbury to intervene while he tries to reinstate Grace with her former lover Giles Winterborne.
Grace secretly shelters Winterborne, who succumbs after exposure; Fitzpiers, wounded and remorseful, is helped to flee abroad by Charmond, who shortly afterwards dies in scandal.
Grace mourns Winterborne, rebuffs Fitzpiers’s advances, and the household is left divided by grief, repentance, and unresolved ties.

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Viviette’s secret marriage to Swithin is found legally void when news proves her first husband died later than supposed and Swithin stands to inherit an annuity conditional on remaining unmarried until twenty‑five. To preserve his scientific prospects she renounces their union; Swithin sails for southern observatories, while Viviette—pressed by shame and Dr. Helmsdale’s suit—weds the Bishop and has a son. Years later Swithin returns, they briefly reconcile on the tower, and Viviette dies suddenly in his arms.

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Hardy records, with ethnographic nostalgia, the vanished west‑gallery choir tradition and the social loss caused by replacing communal string bands with single organists.
The plot traces village life through seasonal episodes—the Dewy family choir, the schoolmistress Fancy Day, rival suitors (Shiner and the vicar Maybold), and disputes over church music—framing a courtship tested by class, ambition, and local customs.
Through carols, parties, and a wedding, the novel stages rural social change and its effects on community, art, and private loyalties.

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Methodist preacher Richard Stockdale falls in love with Lizzy Newberry, who is deeply implicated in organised smuggling, placing him in a conflict between affection and conscience. After joining her on night-runs and witnessing a large seizure by the excise and attendant violence, he demands she abandon the trade; she refuses and he leaves the parish. Years later the contraband trade collapses, Lizzy repents, they marry, and she helps circulate a reform tract.