Books by Thomas Hardy

4. Thomas Hardy, Unexpected Elegies: “Poems of 1912-1913” and Other Poems About Emma .  Some of Hardy’s best poetic work, it mixes “passion, memory, love, remorse, regret, self-awareness and self-flagellation…to serve a speech of intense emotional candor, all in celebration of his dead (and for many years estranged) wife, Emma,” by one account.

I had never heard of this novella , and yet it is a splendid and and indeed frank exhibit of Hardy’s rather brutal and tragic view of human psychology.  It is explicitly a version of the Romeo and Juliet story, except the pair end up marrying rather than dying.  What happens then?  The story is full of behavioral economics and rational choice dilemmas.

That is a chapter from Far From the Madding Crowd , which remains a much underrated Thomas Hardy novel.  This chapter is a masterpiece of behavioral economics, most of all on matters of courtship and romance .  It is difficult to excerpt, because it relies so much on the sequence of events and dialog.  You can read it free here .  There are other sources, including MP3s, here .