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    A Laodicean; or, The Castle of the De Stancys. A Story of Today
    A Laodicean; or, The Castle of the De Stancys. A Story of Today
    A Laodicean; or, The Castle of the De Stancys. A Story of Today
    Audiobook17 hours

    A Laodicean; or, The Castle of the De Stancys. A Story of Today

    Written by Thomas Hardy

    Narrated by Anna Bentinck

    4.5/5

    ()

    About this audiobook

    Subtitled "A Story of To-day," A Laodicean occupies a unique place in the Thomas Hardy canon. Departing from pre-industrial Wessex, Hardy brings his themes of social constraint, fate, chance and miscommunication to the very modern world of the 1880s—complete with falsified telegraphs, fake photographs, and perilous train tracks. The story follows the life of Paula Power, heiress of her late father’s railroad fortune and the new owner of the medieval Castle Stancy. With the castle in need of restoration, Paula employs architect George Somerset, who soon falls in love with her. However, Paula’s dreams of nobility draw her to another suitor, Captain de Stancy, who is aided by his villainous son, William Dare…

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherNaxos Audiobooks
    Release dateJan 1, 2019
    ISBN9781781982044
    A Laodicean; or, The Castle of the De Stancys. A Story of Today
    Author

    Thomas Hardy

    Thomas Hardy was born in Dorset in 1840, the eldest of four children. At the age of sixteen he became an apprentice architect. With remarkable self discipline he developed his classical education by studying between the hours of four and eight in the morning. With encouragement from Horace Moule of Queens' College Cambridge, he began to write fiction. His first published novel was Desperate Remedies in 1871. Thus began a series of increasingly dark novels all set within the rural landscape of his native Dorset, called Wessex in the novels. Such was the success of his early novels, including A Pair of Blue Eyes (1873) and Far From the Madding Crowd (1874), that he gave up his work as an architect to concentrate on his writing. However he had difficulty in getting Tess of the D'Urbervilles (1889) published and was forced to make changes in order for it to be judged suitable for family readers. This coupled with the stormy reaction to the negative tone of Jude the Obscure (1894) prompted Hardy to abandon novel writing altogether. He concentrated mainly on poetry in his latter years. He died in January 1928 and was buried in Westminster Abbey; but his heart, in a separate casket, was buried in Stinsford, Dorset.

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