Rhoda Brook, the abandoned mistress of Farmer Lodge, is jealous to discover details of his new bride in 'The Withered Arm', the title story in this selection of some of Hardy's finest early short stories. Hardy's first story, 'Destiny and a Blue Cloak', was written fresh from the success of Far From the Madding Crowd. Beautiful in their own right, these stories are also testing-grounds for the novels in their controversial sexual politics, their refusal of romance structures and their elegiac pursuit of past, lost loves.