Two on a tower
Subtitle: a romance
By: Thomas Hardy ; edited with an introduction and notes by Sally Shuttleworth.
Contributors: Shuttleworth, Sally, 1952-
Series: Oxford world's classics; Oxford world's classics (Oxford University Press)
Publisher: Penguin Books
Published: 1999
Place of publication: London; New York
Language: eng
Number of pages: 295
Subjects: Adultery -- Fiction; Social classes -- Fiction; Astronomical observatories -- Fiction; Wessex (England) -- Fiction
Genres: Fiction.
Description: "Lady Constantine breaks all the rules of social decorum when she falls in love with the beautiful youth Swithin St Cleeve, her social inferior and ten years her junior. The tower in question is a monument converted into an astronomical observatory where together the lovers 'sweep the heavens'." "Science and romance are destined to collide, however, as work, ambition and the pressures of the outside world intrude upon the pair. In what Sally Shuttleworth calls 'a drama of oppositions and conflicts', Hardy's story sets male desire against female constancy, and 'describes an arc across the horizon of late nineteenth-century social and cultural concerns: sexuality, class, history, science and religion'."--Jacket.