A Pair of Blue Eyes

Stephen Smith, a young architect's assistant, is sent to restore the church tower of the remote parish of Endelstow on the wild coast of Cornwall, and falls in love with the vicar's daughter, the lively, blue-eyed Elfride Swancourt. Her father refuses his consent when he learns that Stephen's parents are humble villagers, and Elfride's feelings are tested when she meets the older, more sophisticated critic Henry Knight, who has fixed ideas of his own about women.

Thomas Hardy published the novel in 1873, drawing on his own courtship of his first wife, Emma Gifford, whom he met while restoring a church in Cornwall. It contains a famous scene in which Knight hangs from the edge of a sea cliff, sometimes said to be the origin of the word 'cliffhanger'. Read Hardy's Far from the Madding Crowd, and see his life.

Thomas Hardy (1840–1928) was the son of a stonemason in a Dorset hamlet and trained as an architect, restoring country churches. His novels, set in the imaginary region of Wessex, began with modest success, and Far from the Madding Crowd (1874) allowed him to write full time.

After the storm of criticism over Jude the Obscure in 1895 he gave up novels for poetry and wrote some of the best English poems of the twentieth century, many of them about his first wife Emma after her death. His ashes were buried in Westminster Abbey and his heart in his home parish.