Audiobook · read by volunteers
Jude the Obscure
Thomas Hardy (1840–1928)
Read by Aaron Decker, David Barnes, Kathy, Robin Cotter, Moira Fogarty, hefyd, J. M. Smallheer, Brother Patrick, George Pilling, thomahal · 53 chapters · 14 h 53
About the book
Jude Fawley is a poor young stonemason in the English countryside who dreams of going to the university city he sees shining in the distance. His life is shaped by two women: the earthy Arabella, who traps him in an unhappy marriage, and his clever, free-spirited cousin Sue Bridehead, with whom he falls deeply in love. As Jude struggles against class barriers, social convention and the rules of marriage and religion, Thomas Hardy shows a world that offers him few chances and punishes him for trying. It is a powerful, bleak and humane novel, rich in rural detail and in the pain of thwarted ambition. Ten LibriVox volunteers, among them Aaron Decker and David Barnes, share the reading of its fifty-three sections across nearly fifteen hours, giving this great Victorian tragedy a varied human sound.
Introduction
Thomas Hardy (1840-1928) was an English novelist and poet, born in Dorset. Jude the Obscure was his last novel, begun as a magazine serial and first published in book form in 1895. The book met with hostile reviews, criticised for its treatment of marriage and religion, and Hardy afterwards stopped writing novels and devoted himself mainly to poetry.
Its themes include class, scholarship, religion, marriage and the modernisation of thought and society. Jude is a working man with an intellectual hunger, and the novel asks whether a country that claims to value learning is willing to open its doors to someone from his background. Sue Bridehead, one of the most discussed female characters in Victorian fiction, questions the institution of marriage itself, and the story follows the consequences of living by that conviction in a society that will not accept it.
The audio version has 53 sections, divided into the parts of the original novel, and runs for 14.9 hours. The readers are ten LibriVox volunteers, which suits a long book whose scenes shift between rural villages and university towns.
Why listen now? Hardy's painful, careful realism and his respect for characters who fail on society's terms give the novel an emotional force that has lasted. It is demanding, but it rewards the patient listener with scenes that are not easily forgotten. The novel's final chapters are among the most painful in Victorian fiction, so it helps to know that the book is a tragedy. Even so, there is dry humour and a love of landscape throughout, and the long recording is easier to enjoy if heard in parts, a few chapters at a time, with time to reflect between sessions.
Public domain
Thomas Hardy died in 1928: the work is in the public domain in Switzerland, more than 70 years after the author’s death.
The LibriVox volunteers dedicated this recording to the public domain.
Sources : LibriVox page · Files at the Internet Archive · Original text