A Laodicean

The daughter of a wealthy railway magnate, Paula Power inherits De Stancy Castle, an ancient castle in need of modernization. She commissions George Somerset, a young architect, to undertake the work. Somerset falls in love with Paula but she, the Laodicean of the title, is torn between his admiration and that of Captain De Stancy, whose old-world romanticism contrasts with Somerset's forward-looking outlook.

Paula's vacillation, however, is not only romantic. Her ambiguity regarding religion, politics and social progress is a reflection of the author's own. This new Penguin Classics edition of Hardy's text contains an introduction and notes that illuminate and clarify these themes and draws parallels between the text and the author's life and views.

One of Hardy's most unusual novels, A Laodicean features a heroine torn between the dilapidated aristocratic romance of the past and the energetic technocracy of the modern world. Paula Power's two suitors—a patrician Army officer, and an architect, representative of the "new nobility of talent and enterprise"—comically illustrate the great social changes that were taking place as Hardy wrote the novel. The World's Classics edition of A Laodicean is unique in its use of the original text of 1881.

Victorian novelist and poet Thomas Hardy focused much of his work -- including classics like Far from the Madding Crowd (1874) and Tess of the d'Urbervilles (1891) on man's futile struggle against unseen forces. Of his rather unromantic outlook on life, Hardy once said, "Pessimism is, in brief, playing the sure game. You cannot lose at it; you may gain. It is the only view of life in which you can never be disappointed."