Two on a Tower

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This edition incorporates an original introduction from Moorside Press, including a biography, a critical discussion of Hardy's place in the history of British Literature and a short contextual discussion of the book. Published in 1882 in serial form through the magazine Atlantic Monthly, Two on a Tower was Hardy ninth novel. For the time, the plot presents a challenging view of an affair between an older – and at first married – woman and a younger intelligent man. The female lead, Lady Constantine, is not the dithering woman that Hardy had previously presented, but a forthright, insightful woman who knows what she wants. The young man, an astronomer who presents a plan to build an astronomy in a tower owned by Lady Constantine, is more the innocent, but one who falls in love with as much enthusiasm. Two on a Tower was not received well by the critics. The notion of an older woman making a play for a younger man was still a raw issue in late Victorian England and this didn't help to make it a favourite of readers or reviewers. Yet in modern terms, the exposition remains comparatively tame and while sexual passion is referenced, it is only at most implied rather than described.