The Thomas Hardy Collection: Six Novels cover art

The Thomas Hardy Collection: Six Novels

Far From the Madding Crowd; Tess of the D'Urbevilles; The Return of the Native; Jude the Obscure; The Woodlanders; The Mayor of Casterbridge

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The Thomas Hardy Collection: Six Novels

By: Thomas Hardy
Narrated by: Olivia Dowd, Matt Bates, Dawn Murphy
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About this listen

The Thomas Hardy Collection: Six Novels is a collection of Thomas Hardy's most well-renowned works, read by an esteemed cast of narrators. Thomas Hardy (184-1928) was an English novelist and poet who set much of his work in Wessex, his name for the counties of southwestern England, and is still considered one of the foremost writers of his generation.

The titles included in this collection are:

  • Far From the Madding Crowd
  • Tess of the D’Urbervilles
  • The Return of the Native
  • Jude the Obscure
  • The Woodlanders
  • The Mayor of Casterbridge

This audiobook is fully indexed. Once downloaded, each book and chapter will be listed so you can easily navigate to the individual section.

Public Domain (P)2024 SNR Audio Classics
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The six novels here represent Hardy's finest and most longlasting works, and they're a pleasure to rediscover and listen to. Fantastic performances across the six works and all indexed to easily find which one you want to listen to. Great collection.

Beautiful Collection of Hardy's Finest Novels

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Where do I go from here …… I loved, loved, loved these stories. Gimme more. Thomas Hardy was a Feminist before the world knew of it.

Wonderfully Tragic and Emotional

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I’ve only just finished the first of these 6 novels which was ‘Far from the Madding Crowd’. Since it will probably take me years to finish them all I just wanted to say the first one is worth the credit alone. Compelling story narrated by one of the best! Olivia Dowd voices all the characters, including the men, so very, very well that I’ve now searched for all her other titles. She also narrates ‘Tess of the Durbervilles’ so looking forward to that one too.

You can’t go wrong with this deep dive into Hardy!

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Wonderful narration of these six novels make re-visiting Thomas Hardy a real treat. The descriptions of Wessex are all the better to have heard rather than read.

Superb stories

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The problem with this audio is not Thomas Hardy but the narrators - which differ from book to book. Some (Far From The Madding Crowd and Tess) are relatively well narrated - some are abysmal. In fact, some are so bad I’m not entirely convinced they’re not AI - they certainly don’t sound human. They’re completely unlistenable, frankly: as if whoever compiled this put some effort into Hardy’s top two works and then gave up. Also, possibly a personal opinion but whoever decided to give Alec D’Urberville a creepy West country accent seemed to miss the point of his character - he’s not from West Country, he’s an interloper whose parents took the West Country name. Hearing Alec speak with the same accent as Tess’s father was… an odd decision. All in all, unhappy with this - if I wanted robotic narrators and weird accents, I’d have put it through Ai myself.

Inconsistent quality

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