CHOSEN BY ANNE MICHAELS AS HER ORANGE INHERITANCE - Vintage Classics has partnered with The Orange Prize for Fiction to ask six recipients of the Prize which book they would pass onto the next generation.
Thomas Hardy was born on 2 June 1840 at Higher Bockhampton in
Dorset. His father was a stonemason. Hardy attended school in
Dorchester and then trained as an architect. In 1868 his work took
him to St Juliot's church in Cornwall where he met his wife-to-be,
Emma. His first novel, The Poor Man and the Lady, was rejected by
publishers but Desperate Remedies was published in 1871 and this
was rapidly followed by Under the Greenwood Tree (1872), A Pair of
Blue Eyes (1873) and Far from the Madding Crowd (1874). He also
wrote many other novels, poems and short stories. Tess of the
D'Urbervilles was published in 1891 and he published his final
novel, Jude the Obscure, in 1895. Hardy was awarded the Order of
Merit in 1910 and the gold medal of the Royal Society of Literature
in 1912. Emma died in 1912 and Hardy married his second wife,
Florence, in 1914. Thomas Hardy died on 11 January 1928.
Anne Michaels' Poems, published in 2000, includes three collections
of poetry- The Weight of Oranges, which won the Commonwealth Prize
for the Americas; Miner's Pond, which won the Canadian Authors
Association Award and was shortlisted for the Governor General's
Award and the Trillium Award; and Skin Divers. Her first novel,
Fugitive Pieces, was published in 1997 to worldwide critical
acclaim. Fugitive Pieces won the Orange Prize and the Trillium
Award among others, and was shortlisted for the Giller Prize and
the Canadian Booksellers Association Author of the Year Award. Anne
Michaels has also composed music for the theatre. The Winter Vault
was published in 2009. Born in 1958, Anne Michaels lives in
Toronto.
Thomas Hardy's thrilling story of seduction, murder, cruelty and
betrayal
*The Times*
Like the greatest characters in literature, Tess lives beyond the
final pages of the book as a permanent citizen of the
imagination... Tess is that rare creature in literature: goodness
made interesting
*Irving Howe*
Thomas Hardy's Tess of the D'Urbervilles has a lush sensuality
about the heat of summer and the heat of lust which makes the
gorgeousness of Hardy's heroine and his country of Wessex both
seems utterly desirable as the tale of tragic fate unfolds
*The Times*
Hardy never used his "country" and his Greek ambitions to better
effect
*Melvyn Bragg*
Tess's beauty and the effect that it has on others gave me a sense
of the destructive power of sex
*Rufus Wainwright*
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