From the author of the Costa Best Novel-shortlisted ‘The Elephant Keeper’, a poignant imagining of Thomas Hardy’s relationship with his last muse.
In the winter of 1924 the most celebrated English writer of the day, 84-year-old Thomas Hardy, was living at his Dorset home of Max Gate with his second wife, Florence. Aged 45 but in poor health, Florence came to suspect that Hardy was in the grip of a romantic infatuation. The woman in question was a beautiful local actress, 27-year-old Gertrude Bugler, who was playing Tess in the first dramatic adaptation of Hardy’s most famous novel, ‘Tess of the d’Urbervilles’.
Inspired by these events, ‘Winter’ is a brilliantly realised portrait of an old man and his imaginative life; the life that has brought him fame and wealth, but that condemns him to living lives he can’t hope to lead, and reliving those he thought he once led. It is also, though, about the women who now surround him: the middle-aged, childless woman who thought she would find happiness as his handmaiden; and the young actress, with her youthful ambitions and desires, who came between them.
- ISBN13 9780007516087
- Publish Date 15 January 2015 (first published 16 January 2014)
- Publish Status Active
- Publish Country GB
- Publisher HarperCollins Publishers
- Imprint Fourth Estate Ltd
- Format Paperback
- Pages 256
- Language English
- URL http://harpercollins.co.uk