Thomas Hardy 
Jude the Obscure 

Jude Fawley is a simple working-class man who dreams of one day becoming something more. Yet after the failure of his first marriage, a loveless entrapment built upon lies, Jude starts to have feelings for his cousin, Sue Bridehead, and soon sacrifices all that he has to pursue a life together with her. A dark and pessimistic story of how man’s unfettered desire may lead to the ruin of everyone around him, ’Jude the Obscure’ led to a scandalous outcry amongst its Victorian readership. It is the final novel written by Thomas Hardy, and one of his most powerful in its unabashed exploration of class, religion, and sexuality. ’Jude the Obscure’ is a perfect tragedy for readers of Bronte’s ’Wuthering Heights’ or du Maurier’s ’Rebecca’.-