Egdon Heath, a woman who wants Paris and gets a furze-cutter, and a chain of small failures of nerve that no one intends. Hardy's editor made him marry two of the characters off at the end against his judgement; he restored his own ending in a footnote and left both standing. The heath gets the first chapter to itself and never leaves the book. Fifty-nine plates of evening light and old interiors, from Tissot's In Full Sunlight to the darkening Californian groves, keep the heath's long dusk in view.
