The Woodlanders is a novel by Thomas Hardy serialised from 15 May 1886 to 9 April 1887 in Macmillan's Magazine and published in three volumes in 1887. It is one of his series of Wessex novels.

Plot summary

The story takes place in a small woodland village called Little Hintock, and concerns the efforts of an honest woodsman, Giles Winterborne, to marry his childhood sweetheart, Grace Melbury. Although they have been informally betrothed for some time, her father has made financial sacrifices to give his adored only child a superior education and no longer considers Giles good enough for her. When the new doctor – a well-born and handsome young man named Edred

Themes

The novel reflects common Hardy themes: a rustic, evocative setting, poorly chosen marriage partners, unrequited love, social class mobility, and an unhappy, or at best equivocal, ending. As with most his other works, opportunities for fulfilment and happiness are forsaken or delayed.

Hardy eventually decided to return to his "woodland story" after the editor of Macmillan's Magazine asked for a new serial in October 1884. It was published as a serial in this magazine and in the American Harper's Bazaar in 1887, followed by a three-volume first edition in March of the same year. The late nineteenth century English author George Gissing read the novel in March 1888 "with much delight" but felt that the "human part is...painfully unsatisfactory".

The novel remained a personal favourite of Hardy. Newman Flower recounted that Hardy named it to him as his "favourite novel", and 25 years after its publication, Hardy wrote that, "On taking up The Woodlanders and reading it after many years, I like it as a story best of all." It was not until 1913 that A.H. Evans' play in 3 acts was produced by the Dorchester Debating and Dramatic Society; the performance was also taken to London that year and to Weymouth in 1914. Years after Hardy's death, David Horlock's adaptation was staged at Salisbury Playhouse in 1983 and in the following century two dramatic adaptations of the novel went on tour in the West Country. In 2013 the New Hardy Players put on Emily Fearn's version, and in 2016 the Hammerpuzzle Theatre Company put on Tamsin Kennard's version.

The BBC made the novel into a film in 1970, starring Felicity Kendal and Ralph Bates. This was followed by Phil Agland's The Woodlanders of 1997.

There have also been musical settings of various kinds of passages from the novel. Patrick Hadley's Scene from The Woodlanders (1925) sets the final words for voice and chamber ensemble and was published by Oxford University Press in 1926. The novel was next adapted as an opera by Stephen Paulus and premiered by Opera Theatre of Saint Louis in 1985. A decade later it was performed at Oxford Playhouse in February 1995. A 15-minute Suite from the Woodlanders was also drawn from this by Paulus and in 1999 four descriptive passages were set by Anthony Payne as Scenes from "The Woodlanders (1999) for soprano, two clarinets, violin and cello. This was described by Payne himself as "a strange hybrid, midway between song cycle and tone poem".

The novel was dramatised in ten 15-minute episodes for BBC Radio 4 by Ayeesha Menon in 2021, as part of a series called "Hardy's Women".

Notes

References

  • (1997)
  • (1970)