Publisher's Synopsis
A Laodicean is one of Hardy's most unusual novels, a contemporary romance in which the heroine is torn between her infatuation with an ancient, dilapidated castle purchased by her father, two very different suitors, and a desire to be part of the modern world and its technological achievements. No elegy for a lost past, the story of Paula's dilemma was meant to be a comic investigation of the `incongruities that were daily shaping themselves in the world under the great modern fluctuations of classes and creeds'.;This is the only edition to present the text of the novel's first edition rather than that of 1912, enabling a modern reader to read `A Story of To-day' as Hardy originally wrote it.;This book is intended for students of Hardy, Victorian/20th century literature, general.
