A Laodicean

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."