Complete and unabridged, with 60 full-page plates by John Constable, J. M. W. Turner and George Richmond. A young astronomer works from a column on a hill; the lady of the manor, ten years older and married to an absent husband, climbs it to see the stars. Hardy set out to make the emotions of two people small against the interstellar distances, and reviewers called it improper and an insult to the Church. It is the least read of his Wessex novels and the tenderest. Sixty plates of evening landscapes and coast scenes by painters including Constable and George Richmond carry the novel's quiet, star-lit mood.