The Woodlanders. by HARDY, Thomas - 1887

London: Macmillan and Co.,, 1887. Primary binding 3 volumes, octavo. Original dark green cloth, titles gilt to spines, decorations to spines and boards in black, dark brown endpapers. Housed in a green morocco-backed solander box. With the half-titles and advertisement leaf in vol. I. Slight lean, some minor soiling to boards with small wear to spine ends, an excellent copy. First edition, one of 860 copies bound (of 1,000 printed), in the publisher's primary binding. Hardy occasionally described The Woodlanders as his best and favourite novel, "set in the part of north-west Dorset in which Hardy's mother's family had lived. Although it lacks the structural assurance of its predecessor, its plot again depends on the intermeshing of emotional and economic issues. The characters live among the trees on which their livelihoods depend, and when Giles Winterbourne suffers financial losses he loses also his promised bride, educated to higher levels of class expectation, and eventually his own life" (ODNB) Purdy, pp 54-57