The Return of the Native - Thomas Hardy

&#39To be loved to madness - such was her great desire&#39 Eustacia Vye criss-crosses the wild Egdon Heath, eager to experience life to the full in her quest for &#39music, poetry, passion, war&#39. She marries Clym Yeobright, native of the heath, but his idealism frustrates her romantic ambitions and her discontent draws others into a tangled web of deceit and unhappiness. Early readers responded to Hardy&#39s &#39insatiably observant&#39 descriptions of the heath, a setting that for D. H. Lawrence provided the &#39real stuff of tragedy&#39. For modern readers, the tension between the mythic setting of the heath and the modernity of the characters challenges our freedom to shape the world as we wish; like Eustacia, we may not always be able to live our dreams. This edition has a critically established text based on the manuscript and first edition.