Imogen Stubbs

One of the great novels of nineteenth-century France, Flaubert draws a deeply-felt but sympathetic portrait of a woman who, having warned a country doctor and found herself unhappy with a rural, genteel existence, longs for love and excitement. Her...

Socially critical and emotionally complex, Tess of the D’Urbervilles is Hardy’s masterpiece. It tells the story of Tess Durbeyfield, forced by her family’s poverty to claim kinship with the wealthy D’Urbervilles. Violated by the son Alec; her hopes of...