A Laodicean : a Story of To-day - Thomas Hardy

A Laodicean : a Story of To-day

By Thomas Hardy

  • Release Date: 1928-01-01
  • Genre: Fiction & Literature
Score: 4.5
4.5
From 9 Ratings
Buy on Amazon

Description

It is novel in which Paula Power inherits a medieval castle from her industrialist father who has purchased it from the aristocratic De Stancy family. She employs two architects, one local and one, George Somerset, newly qualified from London. Somerset represents modernity in the novel. In the village there is an amateur photographer, William Dare, who is the illegitimate son of Captain De Stancy, an impoverishe scion of the family. Captain De Stancy represents a dream of medieval nobility to Paula. She is attracted to both men for their different virtues but William Dare decides to intervene to promote his father in her affections. He fakes the telegram and photograph to make it appear Somerset is leading a dissolute lifestyle.

Reviews

  • Favorite Thomas Hardy Book

    5
    By Tiny Wings is Better!
    Wow! This book totally surprised me. First the title does not exactly roll off the tongue. Also it is not as well known as Mayor of Casterbridge or Jude the Obsure. I believe readers should give this book a fair chance. The plot is interesting, character development and setting successfully steal the reader away to a faraway time and place. But what I really enjoyed the most was the strong female protagonist, Paula Power. By the way, I am not a feminist. Also, I picture Hardy writing this in the 1800s, when a strong woman such as this would be very rare. Also, it was interesting to see Sommerset mature as an architect and a young man. Anyway, one of the best books I have read in a very long time.

More by Thomas Hardy

  • Far from the Madding Crowd

    Thomas Hardy

    4.5

  • Tess of the d'Urbervilles

    Thomas Hardy

    4.5

  • 100 Classic Book Collection (2025)

    Louisa May Alcott, Dante Alighieri, Isaac Asimov, Jane Austen, Honoré de Balzac, J.M. Barrie, L. Frank Baum, Charlotte Brontë, Emily Bronte, Agatha Christie, Frances Hodgson Burnett, Lewis Carroll, Willa Cather, Geoffrey Chaucer, Kate Chopin, Wilkie Collins, Joseph Conrad, James Fenimore Cooper, Daniel Defoe, Charles Dickens, Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Fyodor Dostoevsky, Frederick Douglass, Arthur Conan Doyle, Theodore Dreiser, W.E.B. Du Bois, Alexandre Dumas, Charlotte Perkins Gilman, George Eliot, William Faulkner, Henry Fielding, Gustave Flaubert, E. M. Forster, Elizabeth Gaskell, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, J.W. von Goethe, Nikolai Gogol, Kenneth Grahame, The Brothers Grimm, Thomas Hardy, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Ernest Hemingway, Hermann Hesse, Thomas Hobbes, Homer, Victor Hugo, Henrik Ibsen, Harriet Jacobs, James Joyce, Franz Kafka, Rudyard Kipling, D. H. Lawrence, Gaston Leroux, Jack London, George MacDonald, Niccolò Machiavelli, Sir Thomas Malory, W. Somerset Maugham, Herman Melville, A. A. Milne, L.M. Montgomery, Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche, Thomas Paine, Ayn Rand, Rafael Sabatini, Anna Sewell, Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra, Miguel de Cervantes, William Shakespeare, George Bernard Shaw, Mary Shelley, Johanna Spyri, Stendhal, Robert Louis Stevenson, Bram Stoker, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Jonathan Swift, J. R. R. Tolkien, Leo Tolstoy, Ivan Turgenev, Mark Twain, Jules Verne, Voltaire, Lew Wallace, H.G. Wells, H. G. Wells, Edith Wharton, Oscar Wilde, Virginia Woolf, Émile Zola & F. Scott Fitzgerald

  • The Mayor of Casterbridge

    Thomas Hardy

    4.5

  • Jude the Obscure

    Thomas Hardy

    4

  • 50 Masterpieces you have to read before you die vol: 2

    Lewis Carroll, Mark Twain, Jules Verne, Oscar Wilde, Arthur Conan Doyle, Louisa May Alcott, Jane Austen, G. K. Chesterton, Wilkie Collins, Charles Dickens, Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Alexandre Dumas, F. Scott Fitzgerald, E. M. Forster, Thomas Hardy, Hermann Hesse, James Joyce, Jack London, H.P. Lovecraft, Lucy Maud Montgomery, EDGAR ALLAN POE, Marcel Proust, William Shakespeare, Robert Louis Stevenson, H. G. Wells, Virginia Woolf, Rudyard Kipling, D. H. Lawrence, Thomas Mann, William Somerset Maugham, Herman Melville, George Sand, Mary Shelley, Walter Scott, Leo Tolstoy & Bram Stoker

    4.5

  • The Return of the Native

    Thomas Hardy

    4.5

  • 50 Classic Books, Vol. 1

    Jules Verne, Arthur Conan Doyle, George Allan England, Sinclair Lewis, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Robert Louis Stevenson, Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Joseph Conrad, Leo Tolstoy & Thomas Hardy

    3.5

  • 100 Greatest Books

    Thomas Hardy, George Eliot, James Joyce, Kenneth Grahame, Frances Hodgson Burnett, Jules Verne, J.M. Barrie, Gustave Flaubert, Charles Dickens, Virginia Woolf, Theodore Dreiser, Nikolai Gogol, Émile Zola, Wilkie Collins, W. Somerset Maugham, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Rudyard Kipling, Daniel Defoe, E. M. Forster, Edith Wharton, Henry Fielding, Victor Hugo, Robert Louis Stevenson, H.G. Wells, D. H. Lawrence, Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Homer, Voltaire, Johanna Spyri, Ivan Turgenev, Samuel Richardson, Honoré de Balzac, William Faulkner & Oscar Wilde

    4

  • A Pair of Blue Eyes

    Thomas Hardy

    4

  • The Woodlanders

    Thomas Hardy

    4.5

  • Far from the madding crowd

    Thomas Hardy

    4

  • Poems of the Past and the Present

    Thomas Hardy

  • Tess of the D'Urbervilles

    Thomas Hardy

    4.5

  • The Romantic Adventures of a Milkmaid

    Thomas Hardy

    4.5

  • World Greatest Novels: 25 Favorite Classics

    Mark Twain, Leo Tolstoy, Jules Verne, Jack London, Alexandre Dumas, Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra, Bram Stoker, Mary Shelley, Joseph Conrad, Sir Walter Scott, Charlotte Brontë, Louisa May Alcott, Gustave Flaubert, George Eliot, Victor Hugo, Herman Melville, William Somerset Maugham, Oscar Wilde, Jane Austen, Hermann Hesse, Charles Dickens, Thomas Hardy, James Joyce & Emily Brontë

    3.5

  • Far from the Madding Crowd

    Thomas Hardy

    4.5

  • 100 Masterpieces You Have to Read Before You Die

    Ayn Rand, Anna Sewell, Agatha Christie, E. M. Forster, Louisa May Alcott, Dante Alighieri, Isaac Asimov, Jane Austen, Honoré de Balzac, J.M. Barrie, L. Frank Baum, Charlotte Brontë, Emily Bronte, Frances Hodgson Burnett, Lewis Carroll, Willa Cather, Geoffrey Chaucer, Kate Chopin, Wilkie Collins, Joseph Conrad, James Fenimore Cooper, Daniel Defoe, Charles Dickens, Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Fyodor Dostoevsky, Frederick Douglass, Arthur Conan Doyle, Theodore Dreiser, W.E.B. Du Bois, Alexandre Dumas, Charlotte Perkins Gilman, George Eliot, William Faulkner, Henry Fielding, Gustave Flaubert, Elizabeth Gaskell, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, J.W. von Goethe, Nikolai Gogol, Kenneth Grahame, The Brothers Grimm, Thomas Hardy, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Ernest Hemingway, Hermann Hesse, Thomas Hobbes, Homer, Victor Hugo, Henrik Ibsen, Harriet Jacobs, James Joyce, Franz Kafka, Rudyard Kipling, D. H. Lawrence, Gaston Leroux, Jack London, George MacDonald, Niccolò Machiavelli, Sir Thomas Malory, W. Somerset Maugham, Herman Melville, A. A. Milne, L.M. Montgomery, Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche, Thomas Paine, Rafael Sabatini, Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra, Miguel de Cervantes, William Shakespeare, George Bernard Shaw, Mary Shelley, Johanna Spyri, Stendhal, Robert Louis Stevenson, Bram Stoker, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Jonathan Swift, J. R. R. Tolkien, Leo Tolstoy, Ivan Turgenev, Mark Twain, Jules Verne, Voltaire, Lew Wallace, H.G. Wells, H. G. Wells, Edith Wharton, Oscar Wilde, Virginia Woolf & Émile Zola

  • Desperate Remedies

    Thomas Hardy

    4.5

  • Jude the obscure

    Thomas Hardy

    4

  • The mayor of Casterbridge: a story of a man of character

    Thomas Hardy

    4

  • Under the Greenwood Tree, or, the Mellstock quire; a rural painting of the Dutch school

    Thomas Hardy

    4.5

  • Far from the Madding Crowd

    Thomas Hardy

    4.5

  • 50 Classic Romance Books

    Jane Austen, Edgar Wallace, Kate Wiggin, Edith Wharton, Thomas Hardy, P.G. Wodehouse & Charlotte Brontë

    3.5

  • The Complete Works of Thomas Hardy (Illustrated) (Prometheus Classics)

    Thomas Hardy & Prometheus Classics

    4.5

  • 100 Classic Books

    Jane Austen, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Charlotte Brontë, William Shakespeare, William Golding, Lewis Carroll, Louisa May Alcott, John Steinbeck, Emily Bronte, Mark Twain, Oscar Wilde, Victor Hugo, Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Frances Hodgson Burnett, Charles Dickens, L.M. Montgomery, A. A. Milne, Alexandre Dumas, Leo Tolstoy, Kurt Vonnegut, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Mary Shelley, Elizabeth Gaskell, Anna Sewell, Hermann Hesse, Miguel de Cervantes, Herman Melville, Bram Stoker, Lyman Frank Baum, Jack London, Joseph Conrad, Jonathan Swift, Daniel Defoe, Niccolò Machiavelli, H. G. Wells, Franz Kafka, The Brothers Grimm, Kenneth Grahame, Jules Verne, J.M. Barrie, Thomas Hardy, Gustave Flaubert, George Eliot, Virginia Woolf, Theodore Dreiser, Nikolai Gogol, Émile Zola, Wilkie Collins, W. Somerset Maugham, Rudyard Kipling, E. M. Forster, Edith Wharton, Henry Fielding, Robert Louis Stevenson, D. H. Lawrence, James Joyce, Homer, Voltaire, Johanna Spyri, Ivan Turgenev, Samuel Richardson, Honoré de Balzac, William Faulkner & H.G. Wells

  • Tess of the d'Urbervilles

    Thomas Hardy

    3.5

  • The Return of the Native

    Thomas Hardy

    4

  • Far from the Madding Crowd

    Thomas Hardy

    4.5

  • The Ultimate Christmas Collection

    Louisa May Alcott, James Allen, Hans Christian Andersen, L. Frank Baum, William Blake, Anne Brontë, Willa Cather, Anton Chekhov, G. K. Chesterton, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, F. Marion Crawford, Emily Dickinson, Charles Dickens, Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Arthur Conan Doyle, Henry Van Dyke, Mary E. Wilkins Freeman, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Nikolai Gogol, The Brothers Grimm, Kenneth Grahame, Thomas Hardy, Frances Ridley Havergal, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Felicia Hemans, O. Henry, Oliver Herford, E. T. A. Hoffmann, William Dean Howells, Ben Jonson, Washington Irving, John Keble, James Joyce, Rudyard Kipling, Selma Lagerlöf, Winifred Kirkland, Andrew Lang, Stephen Leacock, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, H. P. Lovecraft, George MacDonald, Charles Mackay, William Topaz McGonagall, Alice Duer Miller, Emily Huntington Miller, Olive Thorne Miller, John Milton, S. Weir Mitchell, Lucy Maud Montgomery, Clement C. Moore, William Morris, Mary Noailles Murfree, John Mason Neale, Thomas Nelson Page, Elia W. Peattie, Marjorie Pickthall, Beatrix Potter, Katharine Pyle, Arthur Quiller-Couch, Mary Darby Robinson, Christina Rossetti, Damon Runyon, Saki, Walter Scott, Edmund Hamilton Sears, William Shakespeare, Nora Archibald Smith, Robert Southwell, Robert Louis Stevenson, Frank Stockton, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Algernon Charles Swinburne, John Addington Symonds, John Banister Tabb, Booth Tarkington, Nahum Tate, Sara Teasdale, Lord Alfred Tennyson, William Makepeace Thackeray, Edward Thring, Henry Timrod, Leo Tolstoy, Anthony Trollope, Thomas Tusser, Mark Twain, Katharine Tynan, Henry Vaughan, Isaac Watts, Charles Wesley, Anne Hollingsworth Wharton, Lucy Wheelock, John G. Whittier, Kate Douglas Wiggin, Ella Wheeler Wilcox, Oscar Wilde, John Strange Winter, George Wither, William Wordsworth, William Butler Yeats, Jane Austen, Lewis Carroll, George Orwell, Agatha Christie, F. Scott Fitzgerald, H.P. Lovecraft, Virginia Woolf & EDGAR ALLAN POE

    4.5

  • The Well-Beloved

    Thomas Hardy

    4.5

  • 200 Greatest Novels of All Time

    F. Scott Fitzgerald, James Joyce, Charlotte Brontë, Jane Austen, Miguel de Cervantes, Aldous Huxley, Leo Tolstoy, Fyodor Dostoevsky, Virginia Woolf, Mark Twain, Charles Dickens, Herman Melville, Ernest Hemingway, Kenneth Grahame, Alexandre Dumas, George Eliot, Thomas Hardy, Gustave Flaubert, Louisa May Alcott, A. A. Milne, Lewis Carroll, Joseph Conrad, Mary Shelley, Victor Hugo, L.M. Montgomery, Jack London, Oscar Wilde, Bram Stoke, Daniel Defoe, Jonathan Swift, Homer, Nikolai Gogol, William Shakespeare, Jules Verne & Ivan Turgenev

    2.5

  • Life's Little Ironies

    Thomas Hardy

    4

  • The Return of the Native

    Thomas Hardy

    4

  • 100 Greatest Books Collection

    Jane Austen, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Charlotte Brontë, William Shakespeare, William Golding, Lewis Carroll, Louisa May Alcott, John Steinbeck, Emily Bronte, Mark Twain, Oscar Wilde, Victor Hugo, Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Frances Hodgson Burnett, Charles Dickens, L.M. Montgomery, A. A. Milne, Alexandre Dumas, Leo Tolstoy, Kurt Vonnegut, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Mary Shelley, Elizabeth Gaskell, Anna Sewell, Hermann Hesse, Miguel de Cervantes, Herman Melville, Bram Stoker, Lyman Frank Baum, Jack London, Joseph Conrad, Jonathan Swift, Daniel Defoe, Niccolò Machiavelli, H. G. Wells, Franz Kafka, The Brothers Grimm, Kenneth Grahame, Jules Verne, J.M. Barrie, Thomas Hardy, Gustave Flaubert, George Eliot, Virginia Woolf, Theodore Dreiser, Nikolai Gogol, Émile Zola, Wilkie Collins, W. Somerset Maugham, Rudyard Kipling, E. M. Forster, Edith Wharton, Henry Fielding, Robert Louis Stevenson, D. H. Lawrence, James Joyce, Homer, Voltaire, Johanna Spyri, Ivan Turgenev, Samuel Richardson, Honoré de Balzac & William Faulkner

  • Two on a Tower

    Thomas Hardy

    4.5

  • Wessex Tales

    Thomas Hardy

    4.5

  • A pair of blue eyes

    Thomas Hardy

    4

  • 200 Greatest Books of All Time

    F. Scott Fitzgerald, James Joyce, Charlotte Brontë, Jane Austen, Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra, Leo Tolstoy, Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Virginia Woolf, Mark Twain, Charles Dickens, Herman Melville, Kenneth Grahame, Александр Дюма, George Eliot, Thomas Hardy, Gustave Flaubert, Louisa May Alcott, A. A. Milne, Lewis Carroll, Franz Kafka, Joseph Conrad, Mary Shelley, Victor Hugo, L. M. Montgomery, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Jack London, Fyodor Dostoevsky, Oscar Wilde, Bram Stoke, Daniel Defoe, Frances Hodgson Burnett, Jonathan Swift, Homer, Nikolai Gogol, Jules Verne & Ivan Turgenev

  • The Trumpet-Major

    Thomas Hardy

    4

  • The Hand of Ethelberta

    Thomas Hardy

    4.5

  • Far from the Madding Crowd

    Thomas Hardy

    4.5

  • Far from the Madding Crowd

    Thomas Hardy & Shannon Russell

    4.5

  • A Group of Noble Dames

    Thomas Hardy

  • Return of the Native

    Thomas Hardy

  • A Changed Man; and other tales

    Thomas Hardy

  • Wessex Poems and other Verses

    Thomas Hardy

  • Jude the Obscure

    Thomas Hardy

  • The Woodlanders

    Thomas Hardy

  • A Laodicean : a Story of To-day

    Thomas Hardy

    4.5