A Pair of Blue Eyes

Hardy’s third published novel, it tells of Elfride Swancourt, a young woman from a good family, who is drawn into a relationship first with a trainee architect (Hardy was here drawing on his own courtship of his wife, Emma) and then a London book reviewer (not to give too much away, this reviewer chap will later end up dangling from a cliff gazing into the empty, fossilised eyes of a trilobite).