"See if she is dark or fair, and if you can, notice if her hands be white; if not, see if they look as though she had ever done housework, or are milker's hands

Part one of a two-volume selection of Hardy's short fiction. This volume covers the stories contained in Wessex Tales (1888) and A Group of Noble Dames (1891).

Thomas Hardy penned nearly fifty short stories, but in spite of this impressive number, his contributions to the genre have been relatively understudied. Bringi