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  • The Woodlanders

  • By: Thomas Hardy
  • Narrated by: Samuel West
  • Length: 14 hrs and 16 mins
  • 4.6 out of 5 stars (646 ratings)
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The Woodlanders cover art

The Woodlanders

By: Thomas Hardy
Narrated by: Samuel West
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Summary

Set in the Dorset landscape familiar to Hardy novels, The Woodlanders concerns the fortunes of Giles Winterborne, whose love for the well-do-do Grace Melbury is challenged by the arrival of a dashing and dissolute doctor, Edred Fitzpiers. When the mysterious Mrs Charmond further complicates the romantic entanglements, marital choice and class mobility become inextricably linked.
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Critic reviews

"The foremost novelist of his time." (Geoffrey Harvey, The Complete Critical Guide to Thomas Hardy)

What listeners say about The Woodlanders

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Superb

Where does The Woodlanders rank among all the audiobooks you’ve listened to so far?

I think this is one of the best audiobooks I have listened to. It certainly ranks somewhere at the top.

What did you like best about this story?

Hardy is a master of character. He paints wonderful images, portraying each person's hopes, aspirations and frailties and you find yourself sharing their pain and longing for a happy resolution to their predicaments. You see so clearly how behaviour was, and perhaps still is, constrained by protocol and the rules and norms of society. I also loved his descriptions of the woodlands and the natural world. It was surprisingly gripping.

What does Samuel West bring to the story that you wouldn’t experience if you had only read the book?

The book was beautifully narrated. Samuel West has a delightful voice and the accents given to the various characters were totally credible. I will look for other books read by him. Excellent.

If you made a film of this book, what would be the tag line be?

Redemption

Any additional comments?

I just wonder how I can follow this. There is a loss now that it is ended.

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29 people found this helpful

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    5 out of 5 stars
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Excellent read

This is the best book I have read for a long time. I was engrossed from start to finish. Hardy so cleverly develops the characters and relationships that you feel you know them and have a connection from early on in the book.
I didn't want it to end.

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19 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    4 out of 5 stars
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Thomas Hardy at His Best

I first read “The Woodlanders”, for ‘O’ level English Literature, in 1976. I was then too young to appreciate the depth and the poetry of the novel. It is a tragic tale, though not without it’s lighter moments. It explores many themes: the nature of love and loss; class and snobbery; belonging; tradition and independence; humans and nature. The lives of humans and of nature are intertwined, sometimes perilously. Nature supports and attacks - itself and those who live in its midst: “the lichen ate the vigour of the stalk, and the ivy slowly strangled to death the promising sapling”. Samuel West reads as well as he acts. His voice is appropriately compassionate and a comfort to listen to. In 1976, I might have understood more had he read it to me.

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16 people found this helpful

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    4 out of 5 stars
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    4 out of 5 stars

Well loved Hardy novel, wonderful narration

What did you like most about The Woodlanders?

As always with Hardy, its great to immerse yourself in the problems of a bucolic community- very different from out 'issues' these days. I had to review to recommend Samuel West's sensitive narration, which made the book for me.

What other book might you compare The Woodlanders to, and why?

Any other Hardy!

Did you have an emotional reaction to this book? Did it make you laugh or cry?

I realised that my problems are small compared to the past.

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14 people found this helpful

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    5 out of 5 stars
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One of Hardy’s best

Since moving to Dorset I thought I best read a Thomas Hardy, and my wife recommended this one as a great start.
It is a terrific book in every sense, as you’d expect you get an incredible sense of the place, and life at the time, but more than that the story is gripping, characters so alive and real you really care about them.
Performance was excellent too
I’d highly recommend it even if you don’t live in Dorset !

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13 people found this helpful

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    5 out of 5 stars
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Enjoyable

Very gentle and enjoyable. Lovely to listen to and do the ironing. x x x

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10 people found this helpful

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    5 out of 5 stars
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Not well known, but one of Hardy's best.

A classically simple tale of love and mistrust evocatively written and beautifully read by Samuel West. His reading catches the rhythm of the landscape in which the novel is staged. The plot, not dissimilar to Far From The Madding Crowd, focuses on the relationship of one woman with more than just man. As you progress through the novel you can feel the threads being gently tied together and begin to see the whole. The climax doesn't come at the end point and it's easy to think that the story is simply petering out ... but hen, the final piece of the puzzle is put in place, echoing back to the opening scene. I found the final page beautifully sad and poignant. Not as powerful as some of Hardy's but in its gentle 'Arcadian' rhythm I simply loved it.

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7 people found this helpful

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    5 out of 5 stars
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Superb.

Great, a brilliant story with all drawn characters. A much overlooked Hardy novel. Nicely read. I really loved it.

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5 people found this helpful

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I Love Hardy & This Was No Exception.

The Woodlanders is set in the Dorset landscape, that Hardy so often uses & so is familiar to us.

It is set, in the main, within a limited area & also with a limited cast, thus we are drawn in.

Giles Winterborne, loves Grace Melbury, who is well educated & comes from a more wealthy family. Her father has allowed the two to consider that they are to be together, as he once did a disservice to Gile’s deceased father, by marrying his true love.

However, a rival is on the scene, adored by the ladies, but less liked by the reader, Dr Edred Fitzpiers.

Mrs Charmond, who links both suitors, is also on the scene. Though older, she is very wealthy.

Will there be a blissful resolution?

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4 people found this helpful

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    5 out of 5 stars
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Women, know your place…

George Melbury has been blessed with only one child, his daughter Grace, so he decides to spend his hard-earned money on educating her. A happy child, growing up among the woods that surround the tiny hamlet of Little Hintock and provide the people there with their living, Grace forms an early attachment to her childhood friend, Giles Winterborne, and it’s her father’s wish that she will one day marry him. But when Grace returns to Little Hintock after years spent at boarding school, she has become such a cultured lady that Mr Melbury no longer thinks Giles is good enough for her, and Grace tends to agree so doesn’t put up much of a fight. Instead, she is wooed and won by the new local doctor, impoverished scion of a once wealthy local family. Happy ending? Good grief, no! This is Hardy, so poor Grace’s troubles are just beginning…

First off, let me start by saying I thoroughly enjoyed this one. Hardy writes like a dream, and the woodland setting gives him the opportunity for some wonderful descriptive prose. Over the course of the book, the reader gets a clear picture of the society of the woodlanders, the trades they follow and how they make their living, their limited but enjoyed social life, the gradations of class even within the working population, the gender roles – a Hardy speciality – and the social and cultural gulf between the working people and the gentry.

However, I was a little puzzled as to the message Hardy was sending in this one, perhaps because I think of him as more feminist than most of his contemporaries. Here it almost feels as if he’s issuing a warning about the dangers of educating women above their station. Grace’s education changes her from a loving child into a cold-hearted little snob; from being a hearty, healthy daughter of the woods into a delicate little flower, who sews not and neither does she spin for fear of spoiling her pretty little hands. Hardy as good as states that Grace would have been a happier, better woman if she’d never been taught to think and had married within the sphere to which she was born. This hardly reads like a paean to social mobility, especially not for daughters!

I actually thought this might have been an early one, but it isn’t. It falls between The Mayor of Casterbridge and Tess of the D’Urbervilles, both of which I felt were clearer on Hardy’s views on the status of women. It’s not that he doesn’t sympathise with Grace’s position as a women educated out of her class, nor even that I feel the portrayal is inaccurate for the time. It’s simply that, whether he intended it or not, the underlying message seems to be, not that society should get a grip and accept that women should have the right to both an education and a happy life, but that it would probably be better for the poor little dears to stew in ignorance so they will make a happy child-bearer and home-cleaner for a worthy working man. I don’t want to get into spoiler territory, but even the ending left me wondering if he was really suggesting that men should be allowed to behave badly, but that women should find it in their sweet, feminine little hearts to forgive?

However, as I said, I still enjoyed the book thoroughly! I listened to the narration by Samuel West – again excellent. West father and son seem to be becoming my go-to narrators for a lot of the great English classics. 4½ stars for me, so rounded up.

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