The Return of the Native became one of Hardy's most famous and recognised novels.

It was published in 1878. The story is set on Egdon Heath, a fictitious sterile couple in Wessex in southwestern England.

The local of the title is Clym Yeobright, who has come back to the area to become a schoolmaster after a successful career as a jeweller in Paris.

He and his cousin Thomasin illustrate the conventional way of life, while Thomasin's husband, Damon Wildeve, and Clym's wife, Eustacia Vye, long for the adventure of city life.

After a chain of co-occurances, Eustacia approaches to admit that she is liable for the death of Clym's mother.

Assured that destiny has fated her to cause others pain, Eustacia runs and is sunk.

Damon engulfs trying to save her. It describes the tragic prospects of romantic delusion and how its supporters fall to accept their opportunities to control their own fates.

It is a novel that conveys a modern picture of a passing way of life although expressing a tale of the weaknesses of human struggle, but also finds space for the short happiness to be taken along the way. 'The Return of the Native' focuses on two young lovers confined in an unhappy marriage because they wed for the wrong reasons.

The book features the difficulty with romantic dignity, and how we often end up in jails of our own making.