
                                  Thomas Hardy

                                Jude the Obscure

                          Preface to the First Edition

The history of this novel (whose birth in its present shape has been much
retarded by the necessities of periodical publication) is briefly as follows.
The scheme was jotted down in 1890, from notes made in 1887 and onwards, some of
the circumstances being suggested by the death of a woman in the former year.
The scenes were revisited in October 1892; the narrative was written in outline
in 1892 and the spring of 1893, and at full length, as it now appears, from
August 1893 onwards into the next year; the whole, with the exception of a few
chapters, being in the hands of the publisher by the end of 1894. It was begun
as a serial story in Harper's Magazine at the end of November 1894, and was
continued in monthly parts.
    But, as in the case of Tess of the d'Urbervilles, the magazine version was
for various reasons an abridged and modified one, the present edition being the
first in which the whole appears as originally written. And in the difficulty of
coming to an early decision in the matter of a title, the tale was issued under
a provisional name, two such titles having, in fact, been successively adopted.
The present and final title, deemed on the whole the best, was one of the
earliest thought of.
    For a novel addressed by a man to men and women of full age; which attempts
to deal unaffectedly with the fret and fever, derision and disaster, that may
press in the wake of the strongest passion known to humanity; to tell, without a
mincing of words, of a deadly war waged between flesh and spirit; and to point
the tragedy of unfulfilled aims, I am not aware that there is anything in the
handling to which exception can be taken.
    Like former productions of this pen, Jude the Obscure is simply an endeavour
to give shape and coherence to a series of seemings, or personal impressions,
the question of their consistency or their discordance, of their permanence or
their transitoriness, being regarded as not of the first moment.
    August 1895.
 

                                   Postscript

The issue of this book sixteen years ago, with the explanatory Preface given
above, was followed by unexpected incidents, and one can now look back for a
moment at what happened. Within a day or two of its publication the reviewers
pronounced upon it in tones to which the reception of Tess of the d'Urbervilles
bore no comparison, though there were two or three dissentients from the chorus.
This salutation of the story in England was instantly cabled to America,
