Generally considered Thomas Hardy's masterpiece, Jude the Obscure has held an honored place for six decades among the greatest modern novels in the English language. It is, in Hardy's own words, a story "of a deadly war waged with old Apostolic desperation between flesh and spirit." Its brooding concern with the strange and capricious turns of fate in Jude Fawley's lifelong struggle for dignity against enormous odds gives this tale of aspiration and defeat the quality of classic tragedy. 

This Modern Library edition reproduces the text of the 1912 Wessex edition, which incorporated all of Hardy's final revisions. The Introduction is by Robert C. Slack of Carnegie-Mellon University.