16 h 9 minAudiobook14 minSummaryRead it, hear it, the 15-minute summary, and print and large print at costPaperback · 6 × 9 in · printing soonHardcover · 6 × 9 in · printing soonAbout this book
What if the person you love sees home as a refuge, while you see it as a prison?
In Thomas Hardy’s The Return of the Native, Clym Yeobright leaves the diamond trade in Paris and returns to Egdon Heath. He wants to teach the poor and build a deeper life at home. Eustacia Vye longs to escape this wild country. When they fall in love, each sees in the other a promise the other may not fulfil.
Around them, a small community holds its own uneasy hopes. Clym’s mother fears for his future. His gentle cousin Thomasin seeks a settled life with the restless Damon Wildeve, while the red-stained trader Diggory Venn watches over her. Across the heath, love, pride and bad timing draw these lives together, with happiness at stake and little room to escape one another.
What you’ll discover
- A landscape that lives Enter the darkening heath, where furze, heather and bracken shape the story’s heavy mood.
- Two dreams of happiness Follow Clym and Eustacia as love brings together their sharply different hopes for life.
- Bonfires in the dusk See the heath folk gather around fires on ancient burial mounds beneath the November sky.
- A quiet watchful figure Meet Diggory Venn, stained red by his trade and intent on Thomasin’s happiness.
- The pull of home Explore whether anyone can escape the place and family that shape their deepest wants.
Who will love it
For readers who love atmospheric novels, doomed love stories and writing about landscape, and anyone curious about Hardy’s stories of passion, pride and fate.
What’s inside
The key ideas, in the 15-minute summary
- Egdon Heath is a character too
- A failed wedding sets everything moving
- Eustacia longs for a larger life
- A native comes home from Paris
- Love grows fast between two dreamers
- A quarrel, a marriage, and a rift
- When his eyes fail, his plans change
- Fate, nature and the cost of wanting more
- How Hardy builds his tragedy
Who’s who
- Clym YeobrightA thoughtful native of the heath who gives up the diamond trade in Paris and longs to teach the poor people of his home.
- Eustacia VyeA proud, passionate young woman who hates the heath and dreams of a grand love that will carry her to a bigger world.
- Mrs YeobrightClym's strong-minded mother, who wants the best for her son and fears that his choices will lose him his future.
- Thomasin YeobrightClym's gentle, good-natured cousin, who hopes to marry Damon Wildeve and find a settled, respectable life.
- Damon WildeveThe restless innkeeper of the Quiet Woman, a former engineer whose heart wavers between two women.
- Diggory VennA reddleman stained red by his trade, who quietly watches over Thomasin and works to see her happy.
- Captain VyeEustacia's grandfather, a retired sea captain who lives at Mistover Knap and has little control over his headstrong granddaughter.
- Christian CantleA timid, simple heath man whose well-meant errands cause trouble, and who speaks for the nervous common folk.
Formats and delivery
- eBook
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- Large-print eBook
- The same book in bigger, clearer type, from the first page.
- Audiobook
- 16 h 9 min, complete, read by Lucas Linden.
- 15-minute summary
- The key ideas in about 14 minutes, to read or to hear.
- Paperback
- 6 × 9 in. Printing soon: leave your email under Paperback or Hardcover above.
- Hardcover
- 6 × 9 in. Printing soon: leave your email under Paperback or Hardcover above.
- Large print paperback
- 8.5 × 11 in. Printing soon: leave your email under Paperback or Hardcover above.
- Large print hardcover
- 8.5 × 11 in. Printing soon: leave your email under Paperback or Hardcover above.
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Le Retour au pays natal
by Thomas Hardy · 1878
Clym returns to Egdon Heath to teach the poor, while Eustacia sees in him a chance to escape the place he loves.
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In short
The Return of the Native is a novel by Thomas Hardy, first published in 1878 after running in monthly parts in a magazine. It is set on Egdon Heath, a wild stretch of open country in Hardy's invented region of Wessex, which is based on the real Dorset where he grew up.
From the 15-minute summary · Key idea 1
Egdon Heath is a character too
The novel opens with no person at all. It opens with a landscape, as a November afternoon darkens over Egdon Heath, a vast, unfenced tract of brown furze, heather and bracken. Hardy spends pages describing it, and he is making a claim. The heath is old, indifferent and unchanging, and the people who live on it are small beside it.
This matters because everything that follows grows from the place. The heath has no trees to speak of, no neat farms and no smart society. Its people cut furze for fuel, gather at bonfires, and keep customs older than the church. They know the paths in the dark, and they know one another's business. Hardy treats this world with respect and a little humour, especially in the chorus of heath folk such as Humphrey, Sam, Fairway and the nervous Christian Cantle.
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What is The Return of the Native about?
It tells of Clym Yeobright, who comes home to Egdon Heath from Paris, and of Eustacia Vye, who longs to leave it. Their love, and the people around them, drive a story of passion, pride and fate.
Where is The Return of the Native set?
It is set on Egdon Heath, a wild tract of open land in Hardy's invented region of Wessex, which is based on Dorset in southern England. The heath works almost as a character in the book.
When was The Return of the Native written?
Hardy published it in 1878, first in monthly parts in a magazine and then as a book. It is a work of fiction, though its setting and customs draw on the real countryside he knew.
The author
Thomas Hardy
1840–1928 · English novelist and poet
Thomas Hardy (1840–1928) was an English novelist and poet. He was born in Dorset and lived in Dorset and London. His novels include Far from the Madding Crowd (1874), The Mayor of Casterbridge (1886), and Tess of the d’Urbervilles (1891). He published poetry collections from 1898 until his death.
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