Victorians! discussion

The Hand of Ethelberta by Thomas Hardy will be our Group Read for August. The copy I have lists 47 chapters, plus a “sequel.” Since this is my first time reading this particular novel, I’m not sure what to expect from this last section. I guess we will find out in time.

Since the chapters are relatively short and the topic fairly light for Hardy, the plan is to cover 12 chapters per week.

48 Chapters (47+sequel)

Week 1: July 31-Aug 6: Ch 1-12
Week 2: Aug 7-Aug 13: Ch 13-24
Week 3: Aug 14-Aug 20: Ch 25-36
Week 4: Aug 21-Aug 27: Ch 37-47 + sequel

Please feel free to post any background on Thomas Hardy or the novel in this thread.

From Wikipedia…

“ The Hand of Ethelberta: A Comedy in Chapters is a novel by Thomas Hardy, published in 1876. It was written, in serial form, for The Cornhill Magazine, which was edited by Leslie Stephen, a friend and mentor of Hardy's. Unlike the majority of Hardy's fiction, the novel is a comedy, with both humour and a happy ending for the major characters and no suicides or tragic deaths.


Reception
Although The Westminster Review said of the novel: Mr. Hardy retains his light touch. He is satirical without being ill-natured. His satire upon the "London correspondent" of a provincial paper is excellent. The little touches and glimpses of vanity by which he shows off his various characters are capital. The late nineteenth century novelist George Gissing, who knew Hardy, considered it "surely old Hardy's poorest book".

If you can avoid the plot summary, there are some lively examples of the illustrations by George DuMaurier (Author of Trilby, with the ominous Svengali, and grandfather to Daphne du Maurier)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Han...

The Gutenberg Project has offers the novel in several formats.
LibriVox has the audiobook read by the excellent Simon Evers.