This is a selection of the finest Hardy stories, including from Lifes Little Ironies The Sons Veto, A Tragedy of Two Ambitions, To Please His Wife and The Fiddler of the Reels; from Wessex Tales An Imaginative Woman, The Melancholy Hussar and The Distracted Preacher; and from A Group of Noble Dames The First Countess of Wessex. Hardys wonderfully evocative tales tell of a rural world that is lost, but whose verities still engage the reader today.