Under the Greenwood Tree (Wordsworth Classics)

Great book. Fabulous colourful cover.Received promptly & no p&p

I adore Thomas Hardy's work. I recently re- read this beautiful novel. Under the Greenwood tree is a poignant little novel. It is a tale of a traditional country community, it's choir, which is under threat and a romance. The novel highlights the beginnings of change for such communities, through the travails of the "Melstock Quire", which is being threatened by the introduction of a new organ. Meanwhile Dick Dewey pursues school mistress Fancy Day - although he is not her only admirer. There is a gentleness and warmth to the characters we meet in Melstock, their traditions and concerns become ours, it is an absolute joy, a real timeless clasic. Hardy's England is a place I could happily live I think.

This book took some time for me to feel involved in due to the older style but was enjoyable as a glance at country life when I settled in

I'm in the process of reading all of the Thomas Hardy novels. Oh Lord, I expected boring as the last time I opened one was at school. I was so wrong.I can't fault them. I love them all.

Very good value as well.

I've enjoyed a number of Hardy's novels, which are well written with developed plot lines. This is his first published novel, a short novel of about 145 or so pages. It is basically a tale of romance and courtship between Dick Dewy and Fancy Day, with a subplot involving the local characters in a church choir, hence the alternative title 'The Mellstock Choir'. However, there is little plotting depth or development, the novel painting a portrait of life in rural Dorset in the late nineteenth century. Personally I found it a bit dull and consequently hard going. Although I'd recommend other Hardy novels, I found this a bit lacking in plot.

This was a good book group choice - brief enough for busy and non-regular readers....... interesting and challenging re contemporary issues (gender roles .... relationship between folk/organised religion ..... erosion of 'traditional' ways of life ....) and good humoured.

A real classic story, taking you back to a bygone age! The service received from this seller was super fast, would highly recommend.

I was blessed with two happy stays this summer in Touisset, an old-fashioned settlement on the Kickemuit River in Rhode Island where my maternal grandparents built a summer house a hundred years ago.During our two Touisset stays this summer, I read four works by Thomas Hardy: two collections of short stories (Wessex Tales and Life's Little Ironies) and two novels (Under the Greenwood Tree and The Woodlanders). Initially, I assumed that I associate Touisset with Hardy because, during a Touisset stay sixty-one summers ago, I read Jude the Obscure. (I remember as if it were yesterday the July afternoon I read about young Jude Fawley gazing at the dim horizon and making out the distant domes and spires of Christminster. I was entranced, and I went on to read the other best-known Hardy novels: Tess of the D'Urbervilles, The Mayor of Casterbridge, The Return of the Native, and Far from the Madding Crowd). Eventually, however, I came to realize that I associate Touisset with Hardy because Rhode Island is like Wessex: an obscure and eccentric corner of the world. Indeed, Touisset is like Mellstock and Longpuddle and Little Hinton: a small settlement surrounded by old farms, composed of old houses filled with old furnishings, and peopled by descendants of old families who talk with odd accents and tell and retell treasured stories about old times and old-timers. Indeed, "touisset" is a Wampanoag word that means "at the old field"!A common criticism of Hardy's works is that they're all about tragic miscalculations and doomed characters. It's true that Hardy views human beings as "specks" ("speck" is one of his favorite words) in the vastness of Nature and the vastness of Time. It's also true that he views life as "a riband of light [that falls] through the opening [of a door ajar] into the dark atmosphere without," and views human beings as "moths[s], decrepit from the late season, [that] flit for a moment across the outcoming rays and disappear again into the night." Nevertheless, he tells us that, as we flit briefly across the riband of light, we can notice the details of the natural world, write majestically, speak idiosyncratically, cherish old and twice-told tales, chuckle at each other and ourselves, and act with curiosity and compassion toward each other and all creatures.

Good

Acquistato questo libro in lingua inglese per una collega. Arrivato nei tempi previsti e nella sua scatola ben imballata. Prodotto gradito quindi direi che il responso è più che positivo!

des personnages attachants, de l'humour, du réalisme et du romantisme en même temps ! Un roman sympathique à lire pour se détendre, un anglais tout à fait abordable...à lire, pour complèter sa bibliothèque du XIXème !

Hardy is a classic and the book is a really good story. Happy purchase.