Two on a Tower by Thomas Hardy

Description

Lady Viviette Constantine, trapped in an unhappy marriage to a husband long absent in Africa, discovers in the keeper of the local tower a young astronomer of striking conviction: Swithin St. Cleeve, who proposes to map the entire visible sky from his telescope and has already set his heart on a book that will do it. What begins as shared astronomy becomes a secret marriage and a long separation — for the difference in their ages and stations is exactly the kind society exists to forbid.

Hardy’s novel of 1882 is his most striking experiment with scale. By setting human passion against stellar distances, he makes the quarrel of two lovers look both tiny and gigantic, and he lets the great astronomical discoveries of his century echo through a story of ordinary hearts. The ending ranks among the most quietly devastating in his work.

Why readers still come back to it

• Hardy’s most original structure: two lovers, one telescope, and the universe.
• A rare novel where astronomy is not scenery but plot engineer.
• One of the great bitter endings in Victorian fiction.

About this DodaBooks edition

This edition is composed for deep reading: crisp, comfortable type, a dependable table of contents, and chapter breaks that respect the novel’s lyric passages. The telescope readies itself the moment your download begins.