7 h 12 minAudiobook8 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 beauty you love always seems to move to someone else?
Jocelyn Pierston can shape beauty in stone, but he cannot hold it in love. In Thomas Hardy's The Well-Beloved, the gifted sculptor believes an ideal beauty passes from woman to woman. His pursuit draws Avice Caro and Marcia Bencomb into a restless life, where a change of heart brings real hurt.
Between London's art circles and the wind-beaten quarries of the Isle of Slingers, Hardy follows Jocelyn across forty years. Success offers no settled love. With warmth, irony and a sadness edged by comedy, the novel explores how the longing that feeds an artist's work can also wreck his relationships.
What you’ll discover
- Beauty beyond reach Follow a sculptor whose ideal keeps slipping from one woman's face to another.
- An island of stone Enter a close island world shaped by quarry work, old customs and a narrow beach.
- The cost of longing Meet Avice Caro and Marcia Bencomb, women caught in Jocelyn's restless pursuit of beauty.
- Warmth edged with irony See more than Jocelyn sees as Hardy holds comedy and sorrow close together.
- A life shaped by wanting Explore how one fixed idea follows a man from youth into old age.
Who will love it
For readers who love Hardy's Dorset, novels built around one bold idea, and stories about art, love and ageing.
What’s inside
The key ideas, in the 15-minute summary
- A sculptor born among the quarries
- The Beloved flits from face to face
- Marcia, and a love that goes wrong
- Forty years old, and called home
- What the novel is really about
- How Hardy tells it
Who’s who
- Jocelyn PierstonA gifted sculptor from the Isle of Slingers who believes a spirit of perfect beauty keeps moving from one woman to another.
- Avice CaroA warm island girl of his youth, simple and rooted in the place, who for a time carries the Beloved for him.
- Marcia BencombA proud, clever woman from a quarry family, hurt by Jocelyn's early change of heart and still part of his life.
- Avice the secondThe daughter of the first Avice, who carries her mother's name and draws Jocelyn's gaze when he returns to the island.
- Nichola Pine-AvonA fashionable, cultured woman in Jocelyn's London world who becomes part of his later attempts at love.
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- Hardcover
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- Large print paperback
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- Large print hardcover
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Read and hear La Beneamata in 25 languages and switch at any time. Or read two side by side, paragraph by paragraph: the way to learn a language with a book you love.
La Beneamata
by Thomas Hardy · 1892
Sculptor Jocelyn Pierston chases an ideal of beauty from woman to woman, as art and desire shape his life.
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In short
The Well-Beloved is a short novel by Thomas Hardy, first printed in magazine form in 1892 and then reworked and published as a book in 1897. It was one of the last novels he wrote, just before he turned fully to poetry.
From the 15-minute summary · Key idea 1
A sculptor born among the quarries
Jocelyn Pierston is born on the Isle of Slingers, a bare, wind-beaten peninsula joined to the mainland by a narrow beach. The islanders live by cutting and shipping stone, and their customs are old and close. Many of them are cousins to one another, and they like to marry within the island. Hardy describes the place with a sense of its strangeness, as if it were a separate small country.
Jocelyn leaves as a young man to make his name in London. He becomes a sculptor, and he does well. But the island stays in him, and its stone stays in his hands. Hardy uses the quarries as a fitting backdrop for a man whose work is to carve ideal forms out of rough rock.
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What is The Well-Beloved about?
It follows the sculptor Jocelyn Pierston, who believes an ideal of beauty moves from one woman to another. Over forty years he chases it, hurts people and is hurt, in a story that is both comic and sad.
What does the Well-Beloved mean in Hardy's novel?
It is Jocelyn's name for a spirit of perfect beauty that seems to live in one woman after another. When it leaves her, his love for her fades. It stands for an ideal that real people cannot match.
Where is The Well-Beloved set?
It is set on the Isle of Slingers, a fictional version of the Isle of Portland in Dorset, famed for its stone quarries, and in London, where Jocelyn works as a sculptor.
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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