Introduction

Hardy wrote nearly fifty short stories, gathered in Wessex Tales, Life's Little Ironies, A Group of Noble Dames, A Changed Man and other collections; like his novels, most are set in the imagined countryside of Wessex. This volume translates the finest of them. In 'The Three Strangers', on a night of wind and rain, as a christening party is held in a shepherd's cottage, three strangers arrive one after another; one is an escaped condemned man and another the hangman come to execute him, though neither knows the other. In 'The Withered Arm', a milkmaid abandoned by a farmer dreams that she has seized the arm of the farmer's new wife, and the young wife's arm truly begins to wither. In 'The Son's Veto', a widow of humble birth wishes to marry the sweetheart of her youth but is again and again prevented by her son, a public-school product ashamed of his mother's origins. Ingeniously plotted, the stories are full of country life and the ironies of fate.