num_pages: 306
description: With a new Introduction by Cedric Watts, Research Professor of English, University of Sussex.A Pair of Blue Eyes,  though early in the sequence of Hardy's novels, is lively and gripping. Its dramatic cliff-hanging episode, for example, is at once tense, ironic, feministic and erotic.With settings in Wessex and London, the novel also has some strongly autobiographical features, as the blue-eyed heroine, Elfride Swancourt, is based largely on Emma Gifford, who became Thomas Hardy's first wife. Elfride's vivacious nature attracts several lovers, but she is beset by sexual prejudice, and the ensuing ironies reveal the constraints of her times.A Pair of Blue Eyes provides an engaging and moving experience for today's readers.
language: English
title: A Pair of Blue Eyes
titlecomplete: A Pair of Blue Eyes
characters: Elfride Swancourt, Lord Luxellian, Stephen Smith
genres: Fiction, English Literature, British Literature, Romance, Literature, Classics, Novels, 19th Century, Historical Fiction, Victorian
ratings_count: 8176
places: Dorset, England
publisher: Wordsworth Editions