The Pocket Thomas Hardy

There are crosswords based on the themes such as love, song and dance and architecture. Anagrams conceal the names of some of Hardy's rustic characters, while the names of his romantic protagonists are hidden in wordsearches Hardy's famous invented place names feature in the Wessex Words puzzles and two mazes, 'Jude's Journey' and 'In the Footsteps of Tess'. Quizzes test your memory of the novels, each one exploring a different aspect, from proposals, faces and inns to relations, food and drink.

Some of the illustrations in the book are Donald Maxwell's charming line drawings from The Landscape of Thomas Hardy, published in 1928, the year of Hardy's death. The artist discussed the views his drawings depict with Hardy himself. The cover shows a wood engraving by English artist Vivien Massie Gribble, created for a 1926 edition of Thomas Hardy's Tess of the d'Urbervilles.