GajimaruClassics.
The Return of the NativeOn the coverChill October, John Everett Millais, 1870
The Return of the Native
On the brooding expanse of Egdon Heath, a restless beauty who longs for Paris, a native who longs to stay, and the wild reddleman who watches over them are drawn into a slow tragedy of mismatched desires. Hardy at his most elemental.
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One of Hardy’s most atmospheric tragedies, where a wild English heath becomes a character in its own right and every passion runs against the grain of the land. Sombre and magnificent.
SettingEgdon Heath, 1840s
The remote rural England of the 1840s, ruled by custom, superstition, and the seasons, where to dream of the wider world was itself a kind of doom.