I recently finished reading A Pair of Blue Eyes (1873) by Thomas Hardy. It was his third published book and one of many “Wessex” novels he wrote, Wessex being his imagined region of England.

I have heard Hardy’s writing referred to as an acquired taste…I’m not sure if this is true, but I find his prose wonderfully descriptive and just slightly idiosyncratic enough to be unique and subtly compelling.

This novel touches on themes explored in some of his other works, including fraught romantic relationships and Edwardian society’s expectations about women. The landscape of southern England, its coasts and cliffs and small towns, is beautifully rendered and the book’s characters are distinct and singular.

“These eyes were blue; blue as autumn distance—blue as the blue we see between the retreating mouldings of hills and woody slopes on a sunny September morning. A misty and shady blue, that had no beginning or surface, and was looked into rather than at.”