Into his story of a simple but beautiful country girl's seduction by another man which causes her husband to leave her on their wedding night and thereby precipitates a course of events that ends in murder, Hardy wove a luminous tenderness and longing. 'I have never been able to put on paper all that she is, or was to me,' he said.

In defying convention and making a milkmaid the subject of tragedy, Hardy gave rein to his feelings for the landscape and rural life - its harshness and resurrection - and endows them with a brooding symbolism and visionary beauty.

One of my old English tutors was obsessed with Hardy, and this was her favourite book. When she tried to get me to read it the description was so not what I was into, I didn't want to read it. Now I get to have another stab at it, as it's part of the BBC Big Read.