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    Those contained within this volume are among his finest and most representative and include The Withered Arm, one of his best known and most gripping; Barbara of the House of Grebe, said by T. S. Eliot to portray 'a world of pure evil'; The Son's Veto, regarded by Hardy as his best story; and, of course, The Distracted Preacher, possibly the most flawless of all. Like the novels, the short stories reveal Hardy's preoccupation with affairs of the heart, with love requited and frustrated, fulfilled or doomed. They contain many of his most powerful portraits of women; they are streaked with the grotesque, the macabre and bizarre; and they are permeated by that atmosphere, narrative power, and vivid sense of place and its intimate relation to character which are the essentials of Hardy's genius.

    It was long since any passage in writing had so irresistibly tickled his sense of humour. Well, he must let Abbott know of this. It might be as well, perhaps, if he called on Mrs Abbott tomorrow, to remove any doubt that might remain in her mind. The fellow Wager being an old acquaintance of his, he could not get rid of a sense of far-off responsibility in this matter; though, happily, Wager's meeting with Mrs Abbott's cousin, which led to marriage and misery, came about quite independently of him.

    The difficulty is to describe it. First of all, he must be a gentleman; but that means so much that it, in its turn, requires explanation...