Pair of Blue Eyes

A Pair of Blue Eyes is a novel by Thomas Hardy, published in 1873. It recounts the tale of Elfride Swancourt who is the daughter of the Rector of Endelstow, a remote sea-swept parish in Corwall. Blue-eyed and high-spirited, Elfride has little experience of the world beyond, and becomes entangled with two men: the boyish architect, Stephen Smith, and the older literary man, Henry Knight. The former friends become rivals, and Elfride faces an agonizing choice.Thomas Hardy was an English author of the naturalist movement, although in several poems he displays elements of the previous romantic and enlightenment periods of literature, such as his fascination with the supernatural. He regarded himself primarily as a poet and composed novels mainly for financial gain. The bulk of his work, set mainly in the semi-fictional land of Wessex, delineates characters struggling against their passions and circumstances.